Treat them like gold : a best practice guide to partnering with resource families

Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families i
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families i
North Carolina Division of Social Services
.................................................................................................1
I. The Fundamentals .....................................................................................3
II. Assessing, Planning, and Evaluating Your Efforts..................................10
III. Funding Your Efforts ...............................................................................15
IV. Diversity...................................................................................................20
V. Engaging Families from the First Contact ..............................................27
VI. Community Education and Public Awareness.........................................31
VII. Community Alliance Building ..................................................................43
VIII. General Recruitment ................................................................................46
IX. Targeted Recruitment..............................................................................51
X. Child-Specific Recruitment ......................................................................57
XI. Key Players in Resource Family Recruitment and Retention..................66
XII. Training as a Recruitment and Retention Strategy.................................74
XIII. Retention of Resource Families...............................................................81
Bibliography ......................................................................................................85
.......................................................................................................88
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families ii
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Introduction
About this Manual.................................................................................... 1
Why We Say “Resource Families”............................................................... 1
Words of Thanks...................................................................................... 2
I. The Fundamentals
1. Resource Families: Partners, Not Employees ........................................ 3
2. Characteristics of a Successful Program............................................... 4
3. Importance of Agency Leadership........................................................ 5
4. How Agency Staff Can Contribute ........................................................ 7
II. Assessing, Planning, and Evaluating Your Efforts
1. Use a Committee to Grow Your Program............................................ 10
2. Step 1: Where Are You Now? .............................................................. 10
3. Step 2: What Are Your Greatest Priorities?.......................................... 13
4. Step 3: Develop and Apply Your Agency’s MEPA Plan......................... 14
III. Funding Your Efforts
1. Developing a Budget .......................................................................... 15
2. Community Partnerships/Sponsorships ............................................. 15
3. Grants................................................................................................ 17
4. Use of NC’s Special Child Adoption Fund ........................................... 18
5. Fundraising........................................................................................ 18
6. Where Should the Money Go? ............................................................. 19
IV. Diversity
1. Inclusive Language ............................................................................ 20
2. Non-English Speaking Resource Families............................................ 21
3. Interpreters........................................................................................ 22
4. Deaf and Hard of Hearing Resource Families...................................... 23
5. American Indian Resource Families.................................................... 24
6. Training for Cultural Sensitivity.......................................................... 25
V. Engaging Families from the First Contact
1. When Families Initiate Contact ........................................................... 27
2. Where Families Get Lost ..................................................................... 27
3. Common Mistakes ............................................................................. 28
4. Winning Strategies ............................................................................. 28
5. Screening Families “In” vs. “Screening Out” ........................................ 29
6. Keeping Our Own Preferences in Check ............................................. 30
VI. Community Education and Public Awareness
1. Community Education Planning ......................................................... 31
2. Purposes and Target Audiences ......................................................... 31
3. Community Education Events............................................................. 32
4. Speaking Engagements ...................................................................... 32
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families iii
North Carolina Division of Social Services
5. Printed and Electronic Educational Materials ...................................... 33
6. Media Relations ................................................................................. 36
7. What Media Representatives & DSS Directors Say ............................... 39
8. Media Interviews ................................................................................ 40
9. Celebrating Successes........................................................................ 42
VII. Community Alliance Building
1. Community Relationships .................................................................. 43
2. The Regional Approach...................................................................... 43
3. One Church – One Child Initiative ...................................................... 44
4. NC Kids Adoption and Foster Care Network ....................................... 45
VIII. General Recruitment
1. Purpose ............................................................................................. 46
2. General Recruitment Ideas ................................................................. 46
3. Use of Regional Approach to Recruitment ......................................... 48
4. Common Mistakes ............................................................................. 49
5. Winning Strategies ............................................................................. 49
IX. Targeted Recruitment
1. Purpose ............................................................................................. 51
2. How to Do Targeted Recruitment ....................................................... 51
3. Examples of Targeted Recruitment for Teenagers.............................. 52
4. Examples of Targeted Recruitment for Sibling Groups ....................... 53
5. Common Mistakes ............................................................................. 55
6. Winning Strategies ............................................................................ 55
7. Sponsorship Ideas for Targeted Recruitment...................................... 56
X. Child-Specific Recruitment
1. Purpose ............................................................................................. 57
2. Selecting and Preparing Youth ........................................................... 58
3. Examples of Child-Specific Recruitment ............................................. 60
4. Family Finding Project........................................................................ 63
5. Winning Strategies ............................................................................. 64
6. Sponsorship Ideas for Child-Specific Recruitment ............................. 65
XI. Key Players in Resource Family Recruitment and Retention
1. Agency Director ................................................................................ 66
2. Supervisors and Program Managers ................................................... 68
3. Child Protective Services Workers ...................................................... 69
4. Children’s Social Workers .................................................................. 69
5. Other Agency Staff ............................................................................ 71
6. Youth in Foster Care ......................................................................... 71
7. Current Resource Families ................................................................. 72
8. The NC Division of Social Services...................................................... 73
XII. Training as a Recruitment and Retention Strategy
1. Pre-Service Training ........................................................................... 74
2. In-Service Training ............................................................................. 75
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families iv
North Carolina Division of Social Services
3. Targeted In-Service Training Topics ................................................... 76
4. Developing a Strong In-Service Training Program............................... 77
5. Training for Kinship Caregivers.......................................................... 78
6. Using Conferences for Training.......................................................... 79
7. Using Fostering Perspectives for Training .......................................... 80
8. Using Support Group Meetings for Training....................................... 80
XIII. Retention of Resource Families
1. Purpose ............................................................................................. 81
2. The Foundation of Retention.............................................................. 81
3. Retention Efforts for Before the First Placement ................................. 84
4. Retention Efforts for New Resource Families ..................................... 84
5. Common Mistakes ............................................................................. 84
Bibliography...................................................................................................... 85
Appendix
A. Expectations of Families ................................................................... 89
B. Expectations of Staff......................................................................... 90
C. Key Definitions ................................................................................. 91
D. Links to State and National Recruitment Resources .......................... 93
E. New Caller Intake Form..................................................................... 94
F. Sample Tracking Table ..................................................................... 95
G. Annual Resource Parent Survey......................................................... 96
H. Resource Family Stay Interviews ...................................................... 98
I. Resource Family Exit Interviews ....................................................... 99
J. MEPA Plan Template ....................................................................... 100
K. Participation Letter to Community Supporters ................................ 105
L. Talking Points for Engaging New Callers......................................... 106
M. Newsletter for Resource Families .................................................... 108
N. Media Contact List .......................................................................... 114
O. Editorial.......................................................................................... 115
P. Feature Article ................................................................................ 116
Q. Instructions for Writing a Press Release .......................................... 117
R. One Church – One Child Program Newsletter.................................. 118
S. Adoption Party Resources............................................................... 122
T. Training Design Worksheet............................................................. 124
U. Checklist for Developing Training for Kinship Care Providers ......... 125
V. Recipe Cards for Your Resource Family R & R Program
1. Using Foster Parents and Teens as Recruiters ................... 128
2. Recruitment Parties...........................................................130
3. Child-Specific Publicity: Heart Gallery ............................... 131
4. Child-Specific Publicity: PowerPoint Slide Shows
Created by Teens.............................................................. 132
5. A Successful Model of Adoption Support ......................... 134
6. Teen Panel at MAPP/GPS Classes....................................... 135
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families v
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Starting Out on the Same Page..............................................................................4
Common Traits of Successful Resource Family R & R Programs.............................5
Improving Collaboration within the Agency...........................................................9
Developing Your Current Resource Families........................................................12
What Is a Stay Interview? .....................................................................................13
Information for Developing Your Program and Setting Goals ..............................14
Don’t Know Where to Start with Fundraising in Your Community?.......................16
Ideas for Partnering with Community Groups on Your Program Goals.................17
How to Find or Apply for a Grant ........................................................................17
Resources for Working with Spanish-Speaking Families.......................................22
Recruiting American Indians: It's All About Relationships....................................25
Using Culturally-Sensitive Recruitment to Meet the Needs of All Children ...........26
Partnering with Your Resource Families to Make that
Personal Connection ...........................................................................................28
Examining Our Assumptions about Money and Motivation..................................30
Things to Consider When Planning a Campaign ..................................................31
Giving Resource Families Business Cards ............................................................34
Working with PDFs ..............................................................................................36
Free Public Service Announcements ....................................................................39
Let NC Kids Help You! .........................................................................................45
Using Community Marquees ...............................................................................47
Targeted Recruitment: Your Current Families Can Help.......................................51
Child-Specific Recruitment: First You Have to Believe ..........................................57
Child-Specific Recruitment: One Perspective on Preparing the Child....................60
A Youth-Directed Recruitment Resource..............................................................62
Making the Most of Child and Family Team Meetings..........................................63
How Resource Families Affect CFSR Outcomes....................................................66
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families vi
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Core Messages Directors Should Send about Resource Family
Recruitment and Retention..................................................................................67
Supervisors and Managers: Whose Problem Is It? ................................................68
The Core of Concurrent Planning ........................................................................70
Other Agency Staff: Share the Passion.................................................................71
Talking with Prospective Resource Families: What to Say
When the Fit’s Not Right .....................................................................................75
Advice about In-Service Training .........................................................................76
Spread the Word about NC Reach........................................................................76
Foster Parents Comment on In-Service Training ..................................................79
Retention Facts and Figures ................................................................................81
A Respite Building Resource................................................................................82
Five Things Your Agency Can Do To Support a Local
Foster Parent Association....................................................................................83
Benefits of Improving Resource Family Retention................................................84
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families 1
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Treat your resource families like gold.
Though this guide provides many specific strategies that have proven effective in
North Carolina and elsewhere, at its heart is one basic rule: if you want to successfully
recruit, retain, and partner with resource families, treat them like gold. This rule must
be the foundation of your resource family recruitment and retention (R & R) efforts.
Why should we treat foster, adoptive, and kinship families like gold? Because without
them, life is harder for the families and children we serve, for individual workers, and for
our agencies. Without them, we have a much more difficult time keeping siblings
together and placing children in their communities. In truth, good foster, adoptive, and
kinship families are worth more than gold—they’re priceless.
This is strangely easy to forget. In child welfare we face a host of legal and policy
mandates, complex procedures, and the ongoing challenge of discerning and pursuing
the best interests of each individual child and family. Specialization helps agencies
manage these challenges, but it can also obscure the connection between resource
families and our ability to ensure the safety, well-being, and permanence of children.
When this happens, some of us begin to see support and development of resource
families as “someone else’s job” and resource families themselves as almost a nuisance.
Recruiting, supporting, and partnering with foster parents and other resource families
is a responsibility shared by everyone in the agency, from the director on down to
transportation aides. We must all understand our responsibility to treat them like gold.
Treating resource families like gold can take many forms, including taking the time
to get to know them, treating them as peers on the team serving the child and family,
helping them develop their skills and knowledge to care for children, and simply
showing them the respect they deserve for the pivotal role they play in our system.
This guide, developed by the NC Division of Social Services and the Jordan Institute
for Families at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work, seeks to give you tools and
strategies you and your agency can use to build, refine, and sustain partnerships with
resource families. We hope you find it useful.
Foster families. Adoptive families. Relatives who provide
kinship care. Legal guardians. In this guide and in an increasing
number of agencies, all these are referred to as “resource
families.” The term refers to anyone who provides a safe,
stable, loving home for a child when the child’s birth parents
are unable to provide one.
Why use this term? We need to think more broadly about
potential families and children’s needs. All kinds of families are
needed for children in foster care. Sometimes children need
families who can play multiple roles over time.
Instead of dividing families into categories, we are choosing
to use a term that leaves the possibilities as open as possible.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families 2
North Carolina Division of Social Services
In fall 2007 the NC Division of Social Services launched a resource parent recruitment
and retention project based on the strategies recommended by best practice and
research. This project concentrates on the application of broad but concrete steps that
individual agencies can take to meet their specific needs, and it builds on the success of
the North Carolina’s Multiple Response System and reinforces the strengths of our
state’s child welfare system. Because recruiting and retaining resource families is
fundamentally a community responsibility, counties or clusters of counties are
encouraged to use existing interagency committees, collaboratives, and other groups to
lead this effort on the local level. The Division has asked the Jordan Institute for Families
at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work to help implement this project.
The NC Division of Social Services would like to thank the following people for their
contributions to this guide:
FROM THE DIVISION’S CHILD WELFARE SERVICES SECTION
Debbie Gallimore
Bob Hensley
Jeff Olson*
Tamika Williams
FROM THE JORDAN INSTITUTE FOR FAMILIES, UNC-CHAPEL HILL SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK
Mellicent O’Brien Blythe John McMahon
MEMBERS OF THIS GUIDE’S ADVISORY PANEL
Carrie Lauterbach
Appalachian Family Innovations
Ruth Amerson
Another Choice for Black Children
Stacey Darbee
NC Foster and Adoptive Parent Assoc.
Alisha Davis
Buncombe County DSS
Diane Delafield
Under One Sky
Regina Freeman
Gaston County DSS
Jon Hunter
Rowan County DSS
Valerie Kelly-Johnson
NC Kids Adoption and Foster Care
Network
Brigitte Lindsay
Forsyth County DSS
Carolyn McGill
Another Choice for Black Children
Katrina McMasters
Guilford County DSS
Jeanne Preisler
Jamestown, NC
Tiffany Price
UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work
Hildagene Reid
Guilford County DSS
Regina Roberts
Catawba County DSS
Christina Wooten
McDowell County DSS
*“Treat Them Like Gold” in the title came from Jeff Olson—it’s been his mantra for years. Thanks, Jeff!
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 3
North Carolina Division of Social Services
A common assumption people make is that resource families—in particular foster
parents—are employees of the agency that supervises them. This is understandable,
since on the face of things foster parents might seem to fit the
definition of an employee: someone hired to perform a job in
exchange for financial compensation. After all, once they undergo
the interviews and scrutiny of the licensing process and have
children placed in their homes, foster parents receive a check each
month. And, like other DSS employees, foster parents are bound by
the same expectations of protecting clients’ confidential
information.
But this idea of foster parents as agency employees does not
hold up. The money they receive each month is not wages but a
partial reimbursement that enables them to meet the needs of the
children in their homes. This is underscored by the fact that as a rule state and federal
governments do not consider monthly foster care reimbursements as taxable income
(NFPA, 2007). A few other characteristics that make foster parents different from other
agency employees include:
• They do not get the same pay increases received by agency employees
• They do not get benefits received by agency employees (e.g., health
insurance, paid time off and sick days, worker’s compensation,
unemployment benefits, pension, use of agency car, etc.)
• They are always on the job, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
Resource families are not agency employees, nor are they temporary workers.
But if they aren’t employees, what are they? The answer, of course, is partners:
people who join with others to pursue a common interest or goal. In their case—and
ours—that common goal is the welfare of children and their families. If we explain
things well enough in marketing materials, orientations, and pre-service training, foster
parents and other resource families enter into partnership with our agencies voluntarily
and fully-informed about the various roles they will play, which include one or more of
the following:
1. Caring for and nurturing children in foster care until they can be reunited
with their parents
2. Working as reunification partners with birth families (i.e., engaging in shared
parenting and maintaining connections)
3. Serving as members of the team: working closely with county departments of
social services to ensure child safety, well-being, and permanence
4. Becoming an alternative permanent family for the child, if reunification isn’t
possible (i.e., engaging in concurrent planning)
When you add all this up—the hours, the pay and benefits (or lack thereof), the multiple
and complex roles they play—it is clear that resource families make a remarkable
commitment when they decide to join in partnership with child welfare agencies.
Resource families
make a
remarkable
commitment
when they decide
to partner with
child welfare
agencies.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 4
North Carolina Division of Social Services
To support resource families and fulfill their side of the partnership, child welfare
agencies should:
• Ensure that all staff members understand the connection between the overall
success of the agency and the agency’s ability to attract, train, and support
qualified resource families
• Apply North Carolina’s family-centered principles of partnership when
interacting with resource families:
— Everyone desires respect
— Everyone needs to be heard
— Everyone has strengths
— Judgments can wait
— Partners share power
— Partnership is a process
• Apply North Carolina’s System of Care principles when interacting with
resource families:
— Individualized, strengths-based care
— Cultural competency
— Family and youth involvement
— Accountability
— Community-based services
— Interagency collaboration
To be sure, doing this takes some effort, but it pays off.
Another Choice for Black Children, a private
child-placing agency based in Charlotte,
NC, makes an effort to ensure its staff and
current and prospective resource families
are on the same page—literally! Another Choice has developed a
two-sided handout: one side describes what the agency expects of
families, while the other describes what families can expect of
agency staff in return.
The handout is used during staff orientations, in parent
orientation and trainings, and on an ongoing basis to ensure that
each party remembers and lives up to its commitments.
Agencies may adopt these handouts (see Appendix A and B)
for their own use.
Like every person and every family, each agency’s program to recruit, retain, and partner
with resource families is unique. That said, it is also true that some of the most
successful programs share one or more of the traits in the table below. Each row in the
table describes a trait and lists the page where you can learn more about it.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 5
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Program Characteristic
To Learn More Go
To Page(s)
Everyone in the agency sees it as his or her job to contribute to the
recruitment and retention of resource families.
5, 6, 67
The agency uses current resource families as much as possible in their
recruitment and retention efforts.
72
The agency uses culturally-sensitive recruitment strategies to meet the
needs of all children.
26
The agency uses data to regularly plan and evaluate recruitment and
retention efforts.
10-14
(Chapter II)
The agency uses the media to enhance the agency’s profile in the
community.
31-42
(Chapter VI)
The agency partners with other agencies to collaborate across county lines
to optimize outcomes.
43-44, 48-49,
78
The agency uses targeted recruitment efforts (e.g., to find homes for teens,
African American children, American Indian children, etc.) to meet the
specific needs and reflect the characteristics of children in care.
51-56
(Chapter IX)
For key definitions of basic terms and concepts related to recruiting, retaining, and
partnering with resource families, refer to Appendix C.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. In Appendix D you will find a list of recommended
resources from across North Carolina and the nation that provide useful templates,
short cuts, and suggestions.
In a child welfare agency, finding and supporting families for children in foster care is
everyone’s job. Yet some people have more important roles to play than others.
Agency leadership—especially the agency director—sets the tone for the entire
agency. When it comes to recruiting and retaining resource families, the impact of the
director’s attitude can be profound.
What the director does and does not say and do sends a message to staff at all
levels. If the director sees resource family recruitment and retention as central to the
agency’s success and communicates this belief through word and deed, most people
come to see things the same way.
Here are some examples of concrete steps agency leaders can take to strengthen
recruitment and retention:
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 6
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Get to know the resource families who care for the children in your custody. Be
sure that you understand what foster, adoptive, and kinship families do, and
make it clear to them that you understand the importance of their role.
• Be friendly to resource families. Model positive, respectful interactions with
resource families when you see them in the building, at meetings, or in public.
• Be available to speak with families upon request. Front line workers should be
responsible for most exchanges with resource families, and for building the trust
that is necessary for a successful working relationship with them. However, it can
be reassuring to both workers and resource families to know that directors are
always available if outside brainstorming is needed or to help problem solve a
specific situation. At the same time, avoid over involvement—if a director is too
involved, a direct worker can be disempowered.
• Give out your contact information. Any time you have contact with a foster,
adoptive, or kinship family, give them your contact information so they can reach
you directly for help if necessary.
• Consider resource families in all you do, from writing policy to writing a
memo. Include the foster, adoptive, and kinship family perspective in all
materials you produce, all speeches you give, all meetings you have with those
you supervise, and any time you interact with the community.
• Send a clear and consistent message about recruiting,
retaining, and partnering with resource families at every
employee’s orientation, regardless of the person’s role.
Encourage everyone in the agency to attend resource family
pre-service training. Regularly report your agency’s strengths
and needs related to resource families using posters, your
agency’s newsletter, presentations during general staff
meetings, etc.
• Make your priorities clear. Demonstrate that support of foster, adoptive, and
kinship families is an agency priority by including it in the job descriptions and
evaluations of all staff; make it a factor in determining promotions and raises.
• Financially support your agency’s recruitment and retention efforts. Doing
so makes sense, given the costs of having too few resource families. Financial
support can take many forms, including offering recruitment incentives to
current foster families and agency staff, funding respite and in-service training
programs, providing longevity payments to foster families, paying for ads and
promotional materials, or other creative measures. Budget to support resource
family retention. Consistently set aside money for appreciation events, snacks
during training, thank you cards and other little demonstrations that the agency
values resource families.
• Encourage communication among various agency programs about resource
family recruitment, retention, and partnership issues.
Make it part of
your agency’s
culture to treat
resource
families like
gold.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 7
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Look for patterns in problems. If you repeatedly hear the same problem
scenario reported as occurring to different families, its likely there is an agency-or
system-wide problem.
• Speak positively about resource families. Give them the credit they deserve
publicly. Always remind others that your agency could not function without
them. Do not allow staff to speak negatively about resource families.
• Support the development and full implementation your agency’s MEPA plan.
• Use your contacts to help recruit and support families. If you have a friend or
family member who can offer a reward to resource families (e.g., a discount at a
store or restaurant, a free manicure, or a larger donation), use your personal
influence to make it happen.
• Insist that your staff treat resource families with dignity and respect. Make it
part of your agency’s culture to treat resource families like gold.
Adapted from Goodman, 2008
• Return phone calls promptly! Families need to have
their calls returned in a timely fashion to provide
excellent care to our children. Provide information
resource families can use to contact alternative agency
representatives (e.g., supervisors) in the event that you
cannot be reached.
• Give them information. Provide full disclosure
regarding the background and needs of the child. Keep resource families
informed about the child’s situation and provide updated information about the
child’s needs. Provide them with feedback.
• Be flexible in making appointments with and for resource families. Work with
foster parents when planning home visits, meetings, or appointments for the
child. Families have schedules, too!
• Include foster parents in permanency planning for the child. Foster parents
should be included in discussions and meetings to share ideas about possible
permanent families for the child. Invite them to court hearings, child and family
team meetings, other meetings, and reviews.
• Provide support and communication during CPS investigative assessments.
It may also be useful to cultivate a trained “allegation support” foster parent or
other person to offer support to families, even if it is only listening. Providing
resource parents with support and information during an investigative
assessment can have a big impact on that family’s willingness to continue
fostering if the report is unsubstantiated.
• Be sensitive to foster parents when a child is leaving. Even if foster parents
have decided not to adopt, they still care about the child.
Families must have
their calls returned in
a timely fashion to
provide excellent
care to our children.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 8
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Gather information about the child from the foster parents. Foster parents
are the best informants about the day-to-day needs of the child. Ask them to give
you information that can help identify the best family for the child and make the
child’s transition smoother.
• Help foster parents adopt if that is the plan. Many children are adopted by
their foster parents. They may need the help of the adoption worker in making
that big decision.
• Be responsive. When there is a crisis or concern, be responsive. Return the call,
go to the home, and find the service they need as soon as possible.
• Follow up with interested families. When a family expresses an interest in
fostering or adopting, get back to them as soon as possible.
• Promote stable placements. Provide ongoing support, planned respite, and
needed services to families to prevent a disruption or crisis from happening
before it is too late!
• Educate and support other agency staff. Enhance the experience of resource
families by contributing to efforts to ensure all agency staff are on the same
page when it comes to resource families. Your contribution can be made in any
number of ways—from short, formal training sessions with the people in your
agency who answer the phones to informal exchanges in which you model and
communicate the important role that resource families play and the respect they
are due.
Adapted from Goodman, 2008
• Process paperwork and payments efficiently and without delay. Help social
workers complete forms correctly on the front-end. It is crucial to retention and
placement stability that children get needed services and resource families get
needed reimbursements.
• Look for patterns and problems with paperwork,
eligibility and funding issues—these impact the services
children and families receive. Problem-solve and
troubleshoot to keep the system running smoothly!
• Participate in resource family appreciation events,
make a nomination for “Foster Parent of the Year,” help
plan events.
• Facilitate connections. If you receive a phone call from a foster, adoptive, or
kinship parent, transfer the call to someone who can help them immediately with
their issue or need.
• Pitch in. Identify possible venues for recruitment efforts (e.g., churches, civic
groups), participate in recruitment events, and distribute recruitment materials in
your neighborhood.
• Say “Thanks.” If you see a foster parent in your building or in the community,
thank them for what they do for our children.
Adapted from Goodman, 2008
When resource
families call, if at all
possible, transfer
them to a live person
who can help them.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 9
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Spread the word. Inform relevant agency staff and families themselves of any
training that would benefit resource parents. Give timely notice and good
directions so foster parents can plan ahead.
• Choose training sites carefully. Use convenient facilities with free parking.
• Be family-friendly. Work with others in your agency and community to arrange
or provide child care so that families can attend training.
• Feed them. Buy good snacks so foster parents feel special!
• Listen and respond. Take seriously the evaluations resource families complete.
Follow up on their suggestions and requests.
• Be a good host. Be courteous to foster parents in your building, help them find
the restrooms, specific staff members, or meeting room.
• Promote conference attendance. Encourage foster parents to attend the annual
North Carolina Foster and Adoptive Parent Association conference.
• Make training fun. Create a welcoming atmosphere in the training room. Meet
and greet foster parents as they enter. Help them have an enjoyable experience!
• Ensure training matters. Advocate for and arrange trainings you hear foster
parents request/suggest or you think would benefit foster parents. Make sure
the training is practical and offers concrete suggestions they can use at home.
• Promote partnership and understanding by encouraging social workers (child
placement, adoption, CPS) to attend trainings with foster parents.
Adapted from Goodman, 2008
Chapter XI of this guide provides more information about what directors, program
managers, and many other folks inside and outside the agency can do to support
recruitment and retention of resource families.
Enhancing relationships with foster parents is crucial to
getting and keeping them. This cannot be left solely to
licensing workers. Many other agency workers have contact
with families, and these interactions have a large influence on the families’ feelings
about the agency (AdoptUsKids, n.d.). Improving collaboration and communication
across the agency can be done in a number of ways, including the following:
• Holding facilitated dialogues with agency staff and foster parents, in order to
clarify misconceptions and determine what works well in current practice and
what doesn’t
• Providing training to all agency staff about confidentiality, since misconceptions
about what can and can’t be told to foster parents is a major contributor to
foster parent dissatisfaction
• Including child-placing staff and supervisors in any foster parent recognition efforts
Source: Casey Family Programs, 2005; Rodger, et al., 2006
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 10
North Carolina Division of Social Services
You can’t decide where you’re going until you know where you are. Take the time to
assess your needs, plan your efforts, and evaluate how you’re doing—it will pay off with
more effective and lasting changes.
To sustainably recruit and retain families for children, you need a
recruitment program, not a recruitment person. A committee of
agency and community stakeholders can most effectively grow your
program. Here are some tips for forming and focusing your
committee:
• Include at least one program manager so the committee has
enough clout to get things done.
• Include at least one current resource parent and one youth
currently or previously in care and, if possible, one birth parent.
• Include community members who reflect the children in care.
• One of the committee’s goals will be getting community members with expertise
in relevant areas such as media relations, marketing, and fundraising to join the
committee.
Here are some of the things you need to understand to begin assessing where your
resource family recruitment and retention program is right now.
• Profile of children in foster care in your county, including:
— How many there are
— Demographic profile (consider age, ethnicity, sibling groups, etc.)
— What neighborhoods or areas of the community (e.g., zip codes) they are
from
— Other characteristics, such as services needed or other special needs
— Where they are placed
• Profile of your agency’s resource families, including:
— How many there are
— Demographic profile
— The neighborhoods or areas of the community in which they live
— Kinds of children they are currently willing to care for (consider age,
ethnicity, special needs, etc.)
— Capacity of their homes
— How many are currently in use
You can’t
decide where
you’re going
until you know
where you
are.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 11
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Qualitative data on your agency’s strengths and needs
— What do your resource families think your agency does well?
— What do resource families think are your agency’s greatest needs or areas
for improvement?
— How can your resource families contribute to your agency’s efforts?
— What do agency staff members see as the agency’s strengths and needs
related to resource family recruitment and support?
— How can staff outside the licensing/recruitment unit contribute to your
agency’s efforts?
• Data on what’s working right now—your agency’s successful recruitment and
retention methods.
Ask prospective resource families who call your agency
— How did you hear about us? What made you decide to call today?
This tells you which methods generate the most calls.
Ask your current resource families:
— How did you hear about us? What made you decide to become a foster or
adoptive parent?
This tells you which marketing approaches are most successful in
recruiting people who make it through the licensing process.
See the Appendix E for a sample intake form for new callers and
Appendix F for a sample table to track responses. You can also
download Appendix F as an Excel file by clicking here.
— What does our agency do to keep you working with us as a resource family?
This tells you which retention methods are most successful.
By gathering data from the experts in your system, and by comparing the profile of the
children in foster care and to your current resource families, you can determine what
your greatest needs are. This will determine how to prioritize your efforts and funding.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 12
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Many licensed foster homes are empty or underused. A
survey found that 35% of licensed homes had no
children placed in them (Cox, et al. 2002). Research
suggests that a major factor in under-use of foster homes
is that families who become licensed are often unable or
unwilling to care for the majority of young people needing care: school-age
and adolescent children, and children with special needs (USDHHS, 2002).
Anecdotal evidence suggests this is happening in North Carolina. Some families
want only young children; some say they only want children of a certain race;
still others are interested only in adoption.
Conversely, research shows that families who express a willingness to
foster “difficult to place” children are more likely to have children placed with
them, foster more children overall, and foster longer (Cox, et al., 2002).This
raises important questions for your efforts:
• How many resource families in your county are unused? What are the
reasons behind this?
• What training and support can you give to prospective and current
resource parents so they feel more competent and willing to care for
the children who need homes? Ask your licensed resource families
who don’t currently have placements: what training or support would
make you feel more comfortable about caring for these children?
• In other cases, what training and support may be needed so that
agency staff can feel confident that your licensed families are
competent and prepared to care for these children?
• What groups or communities can you target who might be willing to
care for these children? What is the best way to do this?
Here are some suggestions for sources you might consult or create to help assess your
agency’s recruitment and retention of resource families:
Quantitative Data
• NC Child Welfare Program (http://ssw.unc.edu/cw/). This site allows you to
search a wealth of data on demographics and outcomes for children in care in
your county, and to compare your county to others of the same size or to the
state as a whole.
• Simple Resource Family Tracking Spreadsheet. Use a spreadsheet or table to
maintain a profile of your current resource families (see Appendix F).
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 13
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Qualitative Data
• Annual resource family survey (see Appendix G for sample)
• Annual staff survey
• Foster parent stay interviews (see Golden Nugget box below and Appendix H for
tips and sample questions)
• Foster parent exit interviews (see Appendix I for tips and sample questions)
• Agency roundtable with resource families and staff
A “stay interview” is a conversation designed
to find out what makes a resource family stay
in the program and what might make them
leave. It is a way to proactively gather information about what is
working well in the partnership and where improvements could be
made. Stay interviews can help determine what kind of
acknowledgement, training, support, or problem-solving can be done
to keep families fostering and developing (Kaye & Jordan-Evans, 2005).
Once you’ve assessed where you are in terms of children needing homes and homes
available, set specific recruitment and retention goals and
priorities. This will help focus everyone’s time and attention,
and it will help you see what’s working and what’s not.
Setting goals for a program requires the same rule of
thumb as setting goals with a family: your goals should be
realistic, objective, and measurable. If the goals are
unrealistically high, people will get frustrated and give up. Ask
yourself: if this is our goal, how will we know we’ve achieved
it? How will we know we’re making progress?
Of course, how much you can achieve also depends on the resources your agency
and community can devote to the recruitment and retention of resource families. The
table below includes some priorities for agencies of different sizes, sample goals, and
where you can find related information in this guide.
Your goals
should be
realistic,
objective, and
measurable.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 14
North Carolina Division of Social Services
If Your Priority Is . . . Your Goal Might Be…
See
Page
Creating a recruitment and retention
committee
Committee of x# of people will meet
monthly and recruit 2 community
members in next 3 months
10
Gathering data to assess your
program
Conduct survey of foster parents and
gather profile data of youths and homes in
next 3 months
10
Getting participation from others in
the agency
All staff will be evaluated and given flex
time for their participation in recruitment
and support activities in 1 year
7, 11
Finding more families for teens x# of additional families for teens in 1
year
52
Finding more families for children
with medical needs
x# of additional families for medically
needy children in 1 year
52
Finding more families for siblings x# of additional families for siblings in 1
year 53
Licensing more families of any kind x# of additional families in 1 year 10
Collaborating with other counties/
private agencies to pool resources
Convene regional planning meeting with
agency directors/managers in 3 months
43-44
Developing and supporting current
families to take children in need of
care (teens, special needs, etc.)
Provide quarterly in-service trainings on
relevant topics
62
As directed by federal law, the NC Division of Social Services asks each North Carolina
county DSS agency to develop its own annual plan for complying with the Multiethnic
Placement Act of 1994 as amended by the Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996
(MEPA/IEP).
Although in the context of a busy agency this requirement may sometimes feel
unwelcome, it is actually a valuable opportunity. Your MEPA plan gives you all the data
you need and outlines what you will do during the course of the year. Don’t treat this as
an exercise in creative writing. Instead, develop and use a workable plan to
systematically enhance your resource family recruitment and retention efforts. Work
your MEPA plan!
For a MEPA plan template that can be customized for your agency, see Appendix J.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 15
North Carolina Division of Social Services
If agencies are serious about resource family recruitment and retention they must
develop a realistic plan and then adequately fund that plan. In some agencies, this will
mean giving those in the agency charged with resource family recruitment and retention
a definite budget.
Develop your own process or use the following table to estimate some of the costs
associated with the most common methods for finding and supporting resource
families.
R & R Method
Registration
or display
fee
Printing
costs for
informational
materials
(flyers,
brochures)
Printing
costs for
marketing
materials
(posters,
stickers,
pens)
Materials
for
children’s
activities
and/or
child-care
Give-aways
or
door
prizes
Advertising
in local
media
Food
and
paper
supplies
Community Fairs S1.00 S1.00 S1.00 S1.00 S1.00
General Community
Recruitment/Publicity S1.00 S1.00 S1.00
Community
Education/Public
Speaking
S1.00 S1.00
Annual Resource
Family Event S1.00 S1.00 S1.00 S1.00
Resource Family
Meetings/Trainings S1.00 S1.00 S1.00 S1.00
Total S1.00 S5.00 S3.00 S3.00 S2.00 S2.00 S2.00
In most agencies, the recruitment and retention budget will need to be supplemented by
community donations and partnerships. Be creative in thinking about how civic
organizations, businesses, churches, and individuals in your community might provide
important materials, services, or funding. Below are some possible ideas.
Even the smallest counties have numerous community groups with time, talents, and
money to dedicate to a worthy cause. Here are some groups that could potentially help
DSS agencies in North Carolina:
• Businesses and Business Groups: Chamber of Commerce, local business
associations (e.g., Realtor’s Association, Builder’s Association, etc.), large and
small retailers from Wal-Mart and Target down to your local main street shops
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 16
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Civic Groups: Lions Club, Ruritan Club, Kiwanis Club, fraternities and sororities
• Religious Organizations: Churches, synagogues, mosques, local clergy
associations, and interdenominational service groups
• Schools: PTAs, faculty associations, sports teams and booster clubs, individual
or group service projects
See Appendix K for a sample letter to community organizations and businesses to
invite their involvement in your agency’s efforts. While a letter is not enough by itself
to begin an active partnership, it’s an important first step.
Don’t Know Where to Start with
Fundraising in Your Community?
Why not start with your current resource
families and staff? Develop a list of the
churches, schools, and community groups where you have a
personal connection through a resource family or staff member.
Ask people to speak to their groups—or to introduce an agency
recruiter—to encourage them to partner with DSS.
Often we think of doing community outreach only to recruit resource parents. This
misses a large pool of people who might be able to help your recruitment and retention
mission immediately in some other way—and who might have an experience that leads
them to foster or adopt down the road.
As you plan your goals and activities for the year, think about specific ways
community groups might help. Collaborate with other units in your agency who might
benefit from community collaboration, such as foster care workers who need resources
for birth families. If you can help find a source for volunteer mentors for teens in care,
foster care or LINKS workers are more likely to help plan a training event with you on
fostering teens. You could involve a panel of LINKS youth in community presentations,
who could speak to the need for foster homes for teens and young adults on CARS
agreements. The group SAYSO (www.saysoinc.org) is another source of young people
accustomed to public speaking and willing and able to advocate for youth in care.
Some ideas might require collaboration within your agency on the use of volunteers.
DON’T GIVE UP! This can create a resource pool for everyone’s benefit. Volunteer Today
(http://www.volunteertoday.com/) is a helpful resource for information and suggestions
about using volunteers.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 17
North Carolina Division of Social Services
If Your Goal Is…
Community Groups Could
Help by. . .
Committee of x# of people will meet
monthly and will recruit 2 community
members in next 3 months
Providing a representative on your
recruitment and retention Committee
Conduct survey of foster parents and
gather profile data of youth and homes
in next 3 months
Providing an office volunteer to make copies
and mail out surveys
x# of additional licensed homes in 1
year
Encouraging members of their organization
to become resource families; writing an op-ed
piece for a local paper about your
agency’s specific needs; manning an agency
table at community events
x# of additional pre-service or in-service
classes in 1 year
Providing donations of snacks, paper goods,
child-care, etc.
See Chapter VII for more detailed ideas and resources for building and sustaining
community partnerships.
DSS agencies can receive grants from a wide range of funders, often without completing
lengthy applications. Here are some resources for finding grants:
• The Foundation Center (http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/)
Provides a comprehensive directory of grant providers by state; also provides
free and low-cost online training on finding and applying for grants.
• National Network of Adoption Advocacy Programs: One Church-One Child
(http://www.nnaap-ococ.org/minigrantmain.htm)
Provides mini-grants of $10,000 – $15,000 to child welfare agencies for new or
existing One Church - One Child programs (see Chapter VII for more
information). Also provides training and technical assistance on grant-writing.
Look for someone in your agency or
community who has experience with grant
writing to serve on your recruitment and
retention committee. Local nonprofit organizations and colleges
often have this expertise.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 18
North Carolina Division of Social Services
North Carolina’s Special Children Adoption Fund was created to find safe adoptive
homes for hard-to-place children who are living in or likely to
be placed in foster homes or institutions. The Fund is
intended to secure adoptive homes for more children than
would otherwise be possible within the limitations of existing
financial resources and to enhance the adoption services
program in this state. The Fund is performance-based:
payments are only made after a Decree of Adoption has been
issued.
Allowable uses of the fund include the direct provision or purchase by contract of
services included in the definitions of Adoption Services (code 010), Adoption
Recruitment (code 011), Adoption Case Management (code 012), Child-Specific
Recruitment, Assessment and Training of Adoptive Parents (code 013), and Post-
Adoption Case Management (code 016). Examples of allowable uses are:
• Recruitment and training of prospective adoptive families for individual foster
children or for foster children as a group
• Pre-placement assessments of prospective adoptive families, including
assessments by private adoption agencies in other states
• Preparing children for adoption (preparation support groups, life books, etc.);
• Legal or court-related services to expedite the adoption process
• Post-adoption services for adoptive families
• Adoption service staff to expedite the adoption process for foster children and
assure a timely response to all families who indicate an interest in adopting a
child in foster care
• Child-specific recruitment, assessment, and training of adoptive parents,
including relatives
• Cost-allocated share of equipment that will directly benefit the adoption program
(note that the standard rules of purchasing equipment and vehicles apply)
To learn more about the use of NC’s Special Children Adoption Fund, go to
<http://www.dhhs.state.nc.us/dss/dcdl/childrenservices/2001pdf/CS-41-2001.pdf>
Every little bit counts. If your agency has difficulty funding its resource family
recruitment and retention plan, consider fundraising. Have you ever thought of working
with your county foster parent association, a faith community, or a nonprofit
organization in your community to hold a bake sale or yard sale to support resource
family recruitment and retention efforts? In addition to raising funds, this can be a great
way to build community ownership of your program and your outcomes and to highlight
the good things your agency does for your community.
The Special Children
Adoption Fund can
be used to recruit
and train prospective
adoptive families.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 19
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Where should you spend the precious dollars you have at your disposal when it comes to
recruiting and retaining resource families?
The Annie E. Casey Foundation (2002) assessed the three main kinds of recruitment
and concluded that they’re all valuable, but they’re not equally valuable. Here are their
recommendations:
1. General Recruitment: events, Public Service Announcements (PSAs), billboards,
foster care/adoption fairs, booths and events.
• Least focused and least effective for bringing in likely resource parents
• Gets some unsuitable applicants
• Good for raising agency’s profile, broadening community awareness
• Spend 15% of your recruitment budget here
2. Child-Specific Recruitment: find a relative or close friend or canvas support groups,
especially for children with special needs (e.g., hearing impaired).
• Expensive. Should be 25% of recruitment budget
3. Targeted Recruitment: look at needs of the young people in your custody, then
look at the pool of available homes.
• Understand needs/traits of children (groups of youth entering care)
• Assess your community: look at data, look at successful foster families you
know
• If you pitch the message right, Wednesday’s Child can be targeted and
effective
• This should be 60% of your budget
Recruitment Approach Suggested Portion of Your R & R Budget
General 15%
Child-Specific 25%
Targeted 60%
Source: AECF, 2002
To learn more about general, targeted, and child-specific recruitment, consult Chapters
VIII, IX, and X of this guide.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 20
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Federal law and best practice dictate that agencies should diligently recruit potential
foster and adoptive families who reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of children for
whom homes are needed (P.L. 104-188).
When recruiting resource families for a targeted population, involve any agency staff
who are a part of that population and/or are trained to address racial/ethnic/cultural
barriers. Similarly, agencies should ask current foster, adoptive,
and kinship families to help them learn about and connect with
various cultures and groups in the community.
It is important to provide culturally appropriate materials,
food, and personal products and to decorate lobbies, offices,
booths at fairs, etc. with items which reflect the cultural
heritage of the various communities from which you want to
recruit resource families.
When families from diverse backgrounds express an
interest in becoming a resource family, allow for flexibility; recognize the challenges
different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups might face adjusting to rules and regulations
to which they are not accustomed. One of the ways to help people feel comfortable in a
new setting is to be aware of the language used.
Inclusive language is language which recognizes that:
• People’s experiences differ.
• Our shared language makes the experiences of dominant groups more visible
than those of oppressed groups.
• People are empowered by having a language with which to express their life
experiences.
• Language changes as cultural and social conditions change.
• Our language choices have the power to hurt and exclude others and to damage
or hinder relationships.
Culturally appropriate and non-gender-specific language should be used in professional
documentation and advertising and educational materials.
1. Choose inclusiveness over grammatical correctness or linguistic grace.
— With a little thought, these need not conflict.
2. Call people what they want to be called.
— Individual and group preferences can change over time. Keep up to date.
— If you’re not sure, ask.
— Words do have the power to hurt. They also have the power to convey
understanding and respect.
3. Take correction with grace. Your willingness to do so demonstrates partnership.
— DON’T SAY: “I didn’t mean anything by it” or “That’s just political
correctness.”
Use current resource
families to learn
about and connect
with various cultures
and groups in your
community.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 21
North Carolina Division of Social Services
􀂃􈍓 Such statements convey that you weren’t thinking about what you
were saying, didn’t care enough to think about how your words
would affect the other person, or that you think other
considerations are more important.
􀂃􈍏 Our language says more about what we think than we are usually
aware of, so choose language that reflects what you really mean.
— DO SAY: “Oops...sorry. I won’t say that again.”
􀂃􈍔 Then follow through. If you’re not sure why someone took
exception to something you said, ask.
Source: “Domestic Violence in Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, and Bisexual Communities,” A curriculum developed for: HIV Education and
Training Programs NYSDOH AIDS Institute, by NYS Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence July, 2001, cited in North
Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 2006
Although partnering with non-English speaking families can be a significant challenge
for monolingual child welfare staff, families should not be discouraged from becoming a
resource family because of this barrier. Being able to
communicate with a child in his own language as you take care
of him 24 hours a day is far more important than the ease with
which resource families communicate with professionals
serving the child.
Still, agencies have a responsibility to ask practical
questions about working with current and prospective resource
families who do not speak English, such as, who can conduct
pre-service and other training in this family’s language? Even if
agencies have documentation forms available in the family’s
language, that does not mean there is someone in the agency
that can read that language once the forms are filled out.
Professionals ask (and rightly so) what will happen once we get non-English speaking
families licensed—how will the family communicate with other professionals? Interact
with the schools? Administer medication? There are many possible obstacles.
If you face questions such as these, don’t be discouraged. Solutions can be found.
Indeed, the seed of many solutions may be found within resource families themselves—
often at least one adult in the household speaks some English, which allows
communication and facilitates problem solving.
That said, at present there is no single way to get answers to questions you may
have about licensing/approving and partnering with non-English speaking families. The
best approach is to reach out to other agencies to see if they have encountered and
overcome obstacles similar to the ones you face. The NC Division of Social Services
sponsors several e-mail listservs that can be used to query your peers at other agencies:
• MRS listserv. Subscribed to by county DSS child welfare practitioners,
supervisors, program managers, directors, university partners, Division staff,
and others. To join, send e-mail to MRS@lists.ncmail.net
• Child Welfare Supervisor listserv. Subscribed to by county DSS child welfare
supervisors, Division staff, university partners, and others. To join, send e-mail
to super-vision@resources.biglist.com.
The ease with which
resource families
communicate with a child
is far more important
than the ease with which
they communicate with
professionals serving the
child.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 22
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Certified MAPP/GPS Leaders listserv. Subscribed to by certified MAPP/GPS
leaders and Division training staff. To join, contact the NC Division of Social
Services’ Child Welfare Staff Development Unit (919/334-1172).
.
• Spanish-Speaking MAPP/GPS Leaders. The Division
maintains a list of certified MAPP/GPS leaders who speak
Spanish and are willing to contract with agencies to lead
Spanish-speaking MAPP/GPS groups. To obtain this
information, call the Division’s Child Welfare Staff
Development Unit (919/334-1172).
• Great Written Resource. A resource on working with Spanish-speaking
resource families is Nuestra Familia, Nuestra Cultura: Promoting & Supporting
Latino Families in Adoption and Foster Care (AdoptUsKids, 2008). Go to
<www.adoptuskids.org/images/resourceCenter/NuestraFamilia_NuestraCultur
a.pdf>
Children in resource families should not be used as interpreters. Asking a child to
interpret for his parents can disrupt the family hierarchy—it gives the child the
opportunity to change the meaning of what’s being said and/or it may expose the child
to information he is not developmentally ready to hear. Instead, use an adult interpreter.
Finding an Interpreter. Many social services agencies contract with people from the
community to help interpret exchanges with non-English speaking families. If your
agency does not, or if you need to communicate in a language in which your regular
interpreters are not fluent, consider contacting the language department of a nearby
college or university or your local hospital; these can be excellent resources for locating
free or low-cost interpreters. Faith communities (churches, mosques, temples) that serve
native speakers of a language may also have people willing to volunteer time as an
interpreter. Finally, reach out to organizations that provide ESL (English as a Second
Language) classes in your county for recommendations. Once you identify one person
who is bilingual, he or she can help you find other potential interpreters in the
community.
If You Cannot Find an Interpreter. If no interpreter is available, some guidelines for
communicating include the following:
• Speak slowly in a calm, moderate voice.
• Address a person using his or her complete name or last name. Use a formal
style, especially if you are not familiar the person.
• Use any word(s) you know in the person’s language and act out words and
actions while verbalizing them.
• Discuss one topic at a time; give instructions in sequence.
• Avoid asking questions or making statements in the negative.
• Avoid using pronouns.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 23
North Carolina Division of Social Services
If there are still difficulties communicating, you may wish to try communicating in
writing or through a third language (i.e., you may not speak Russian and the Russian
parent may not speak English, but you both may speak some French).
Translating Written Materials. Web sites such as
<http://www.altavista/babelfish.com> can translate blocks of text into many languages
from English and vice versa at no cost. However, it is a good idea to limit your use of
this resource—use a qualified translator to ensure your materials say what you intend
them to say.
Source: North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 2006
Because most child welfare professionals have not worked with deaf or hard of hearing
resource families, they may anticipate difficulties in partnering with them. However, deaf
and hard of hearing families should not be discouraged from becoming resource
families. Indeed, because of their experiences and knowledge of community services
and resources, they can provide excellent care—especially to children who are
themselves deaf or hard of hearing. Following are some guidelines for working with
resource families who are deaf or hard of hearing.
• Do not use children to interpret. Instead, use interpreters. The interpreter and
speaker should be positioned beside one another so the resource family member
can see both persons easily.
• If the resource family is speech reading, ensure proper lighting so he or she can
see the speaker’s mouth easily. The speaker should face the speech reader and
be positioned at the speech reader’s eye level. The speaker should talk slowly yet
naturally.
• Consider videoconferencing to provide services for clients with hearing
impairments.
• Consider needs of clients with hearing impairments when purchasing alarm
systems, alarm clocks, phone systems, televisions and other equipment that is
typically utilized through hearing.
TTY Devices. A text telephone device (TTY) is a keyboard and text display device
that can be connected to a telephone and is used by persons who are deaf, hard of
hearing, or who have speech impairments. Some social services agencies have a TTY
with a dedicated phone line. TTY equipment should be tested regularly and all staff
should be trained on its use and appropriate terminology. If the organization does not
have TTY it may communicate with TTY users via the NC Relay. The NC Relay system
allows an operator to translate for persons who are deaf or hard of hearing for people
who do not have a TTY system on their end. There is also TTY compatible software and
hardware for personal computers. Additionally, TTY might be set up as an answering
machine to retrieve text teletype messages. If your agency receives TTY calls on a voice
line, these are typically identified by a high pitched electronic beeping sound, by an
announcer, or by silence at the other end. If an organization uses portable TTY units, it
is suggested that these are located near the phone in order to reduce delays.
NC Relay is a service which can connect a TTY caller with a hearing caller. Access NC
Relay by dialing 711 or 877-735-8200.
Source: North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 2006
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 24
North Carolina Division of Social Services
When working with American Indian resource families it is important to learn about their
tribe and its traditions and history. Child welfare professionals should have a good
understanding of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and resources available within the
tribe. They must also demonstrate a strong respect for the tribe’s cultural integrity.
Resources for working with American Indian resource families include the following:
• Working with American Indian Families, Children’s Services Practice Notes, vol.
11, no. 2 <http://ssw.unc.edu/fcrp/Cspn/vol11_no2.htm>
• Indian Child Welfare Issues [Resource Page], National Resource Center for
Foster Care and Permanency Planning
<http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/socwork/nrcfcpp/info_services/indian-child-welfare.
html>
American Indians often find it challenging to become resource families for the following
reasons:
1. A value of non-interference in some tribes inhibits people from offering themselves
to assist in someone else’s business or problem.
2. It is likely that potential foster families may have experienced foster care themselves
or had relatives who were in care: before 1978 as many as one out of every four
Indian children were in some form of out-of-home care. Many Indian people do not
want to expose their family to what they experienced.
3. Native Americans may not trust the child welfare system and what it represents.
They also may have concerns how their family might be judged.
4. Many people have such a negative view of the child welfare system that they simply
do not want to become part of the program that removes children.
Try using a door-to-door home-finding approach. In this approach, a resource family
recruiter begins by going to respected elders and to community and spiritual leaders.
The leaders are informed about the need for resource families and are asked to
recommend families that would be good at taking care of children. Once a few names
are gathered, the worker starts the process of visiting each recommended person’s
home. During the visit, the worker asks if she/he can tell them about the child welfare
system and about the need for resource families, but the worker does not usually ask
about their interest in actually providing foster care at this time. The worker may say
“People around here say that you care about your kids. Do you know anyone who you
think would also be good at taking care of kids?” The worker may come back several
times before asking the family to consider becoming a resource family. This approach is
considered polite and respectful.
Additionally, a worker might wait until a particular child needs a home and make a
request in the context of that child’s need. It is helpful if the worker is part of and
knows the community. This must be done in a respectful way by a worker willing to take
the time to develop relationships with the community members and tribal leaders.
From Terry Cross (1995) Heritage and Helping: A Model Curriculum for Indian Child Welfare Practice. National Indian Child Welfare
Association. Reprinted from Answering the Call: Getting More for Children from Your Recruitment Efforts, Practitioner’s Guide (n.d.)
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 25
North Carolina Division of Social Services
“Both of us are Lumbee, so we had a relationship starting out. We went to [tribal] board
meetings to talk to them. Their concern is Native American children being placed with non-
Native American families. But we explained to them our numbers, that Native American
children far outweigh the number of Native American foster families. And that most
recruitment comes from word of mouth, through churches, etc.
“We also adjusted our criteria. It used to be that you had to turn in an application before
going to MAPP/GPS class. But we lost some people who didn't get their application in. Now, if
someone calls and we have a MAPP/GPS class starting the next week, you're welcome to
come. Just get us the application before the end of MAPP/GPS. We had five or six Native
American families come to our last MAPP/GPS class.”
— Anthony Maynor & Debra Bailey, Robeson County DSS
Stay in touch with demographic trends in the communities you serve. To find and
prepare resource families who can meet the needs of the children in foster care, it is
important to be able to answer the following types of questions about the children’s
racial, ethnic, or cultural groups.
• What are the roles of men and women in this culture? What is the role of
children, elders and extended family members?
• What is the communication style of this culture? How does one show respect?
• How are children disciplined?
• What is the role of religion or spirituality in this community?
You can educate yourself through formal training, your own research and, most of all,
by learning directly from someone who belongs to the group in question.
True partnership with prospective and current resource families depends on one-on-one
relationships and building trust. Some guidelines for relationship building with people
who are different from you include the following.
• Be flexible about time; different cultures view time differently
• Correct pronunciation shows respect: learn to pronounce each person’s name
• Do not be offended if a client speaks to another person in their language
• Adjust your communication style as much as possible to the person’s style in
regards to tone, pauses, pace of speech, gestures, eye contact, personal space,
and touching
• Understand the person’s interpretation of their culture; it is critical to recognize
that everyone has his or her own personal belief system
Source: North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 2006
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 26
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Recruiting families of color can pose a particular
challenge when there is mistrust between
agencies and communities (Casey Family
Programs, 2005). The frequency with which
children are placed with families of a different
ethnicity can contribute to this sense of mistrust. In North Carolina, the
high incidence of Lumbee children placed in non-Lumbee foster homes has
caused concern (Jenkins, 2007), while the state’s growing Latino
population suggests a similar trend may develop if Latino foster families
are not added to recruitment efforts.
Casey Family Programs’ Breakthrough Series Collaborative (2005) has
generated numerous interventions in this area. Agencies in other states
have successfully undertaken recruitment campaigns among communities
of color with similar interventions (Utah Foster Care Foundation, cited in
ACF, 2001; Contra Costa, CA, “Kids Like Maria” campaign).
Recommendations include:
a. Translating materials into Spanish or other languages of minority
communities, including recruitment brochures, applications, flyers
for schools, posters in community spaces, etc.
b. Certifying foster families of color as co-trainers of MAPP/GPS
c. Conducting joint recruitment efforts by families of color at fairs
and other community events
d. Making joint contact (agency staff and foster parents of color) with
prospective foster families
e. Having existing foster families of color contact prospective
families who have dropped out or slowed in their momentum
towards licensing
f. Conducting informational meetings in other languages and/or with
other foster parents of color
g. Creating a recruitment video for specific groups of color
h. Implementing a dedicated line for foster family inquiries with a
recording in multiple languages
i. Building relationships and focusing recruitment efforts in faith,
ethnic, and civic organizations in communities of color
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 27
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Many people think about fostering for a year or more and hear messages about foster
care three or four times before making an initial inquiry call (Pasztor & Wynne 1995).
When people finally reach out to make that first call, your response needs to be
warm, timely, and encouraging (AdoptUsKids, n.d.). From the beginning, each potential
foster or adoptive family should be considered a precious resource, deserving personal
attention and efficient service.
Remember, we need them much more than they need us.
Often potential resource families drop out of the licensing process because it drags on
for too long, or because they feel forgotten or unsupported. One study found that out of
2,698 inquiries from prospective foster families, only 8% (n=227) resulted in new
licensed/approved foster homes for the child welfare system (Wildfire, 2008).
The Annie E. Casey Foundation suggests that agencies can get more people
successfully through to placement by making the process more efficient. They found
that typically a lot of time is wasted between licensing steps:
The First Call Orientation
Training Application
Assessment Approval
Orientation Pre-service Training
Application Assessment
Approval Placement
Consider the following questions to enhance your response to potential resource
families:
• When do gaps occur between the first call and placement of a child in a foster
home?
• Which steps take the most time?
• Where do you lose the most people?
• What are you doing or can you start doing to keep people engaged?
• What are you doing or can you do to speed up the process?
Source: AECF, 2002
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 28
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Waiting Too Long
Some agencies wait until families complete all or part of MAPP/GPS training before
meeting with them individually, starting the application process, submitting background
checks, or doing a home visit. While this strategy may seem to help you focus your time
on families who are “serious” about fostering, it may instead mean that people who
could be serious become frustrated with the long wait and give up. The sooner people
can make a personal connection with someone at your agency, the more likely they are
to commit to the process. If instead they have to wait through a drawn out process
before being personally engaged, they are more likely to quit before they really get
started.
Being Too Hasty
Some agencies are too quick to screen individuals out of consideration if they do not
meet certain requirements. Although some shortcomings cannot be remedied (e.g., a
serious criminal history), others can. For example, someone may be perfectly willing to
get her GED if it means being able to care for children who need it.
The Personal Touch
It’s crucial to have standards for quick, personal responses to new callers. People who
make a personal connection to an agency are much more likely to stay the course. At
least one large public agency in North Carolina adopted a policy of visiting families
within one week of that first phone call from a prospective resource family. While
workers at first thought this would be too time consuming, it became part of a very
successful recruitment and retention approach.
At a minimum, interested callers should receive a follow-up phone call within a few
days to answer additional questions and be sure they received their information packet
and orientation session date.
Another worker made a point of personally calling all interested families before the
orientation session to give them her name again and let them know she would be at the
welcome table at the orientation. Especially for single parents, having a person to look
for—and who is looking out for them—can make all the difference.
Don’t have enough staff to do home visits to all new
callers? This can be a great role for experienced resource families. Or you
can ask new callers if they would like a phone call from a current resource
family to answer more of their questions.
Worried about what your current resource families might say? Think
again. It’s better for families to know the real story from the beginning,
and to know your agency’s going to be straight with them.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 29
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Tracking What Works
Collect information to help you assess which recruitment efforts are most effective. Be
sure you ask “what made you decide to call today?” or “how did you hear about us?”
every time someone new calls. See Appendix E for a sample intake form for new callers
and Appendix F for a sample spreadsheet to track responses.
Other Ideas from AdoptUsKids for Engaging New Callers
• Have a special recruitment 800 number and a real person answering the phone;
have access to a translator for return call.
• Prepare the person who answers the phone to answer most questions. Don’t
bounce the caller around from person to person.
• Make sure your orientation of prospective parents makes them feel welcomed,
respected, accepted, and needed.
• Teach all who come into contact with resource parents how to handle the first call.
In training, emphasize the best way to respond to cultural differences.
• Provide persons who have first contact and/or take first calls with talking points
rather than a script and with answers to commonly asked question. See a sample of
talking points in Appendix L.
• Provide new callers with information on the children who need homes:
— Age and various racial ethnic backgrounds
— Emotional needs of children
• Provide new callers with information on the pre-service training process.
• Send notes and meeting reminders at least a week before the first orientation or
training session.
• Put the parents on a mailing list for newsletters.
• Periodically audit the agency’s first contact approach:
— Use a “secret shopper” method in which agency staff call in to personally
experience the quality of response.
— Auditors: use a checklist to rate the experience and give consistent feedback.
— Ask: Do we encourage callers to bring friends to orientation?
Source: AdoptUsKids, n.d..
Everyone who recruits and licenses resource families must
answer a fundamental question. When you begin a mutual
assessment, is your underlying belief that you need to screen
out inappropriate families, uncovering secrets or
misconceptions that might make you reluctant to place a
child in their home? Or is your underlying belief that you need
to screen in families who show potential and interest by determining what support,
training, or resources they would need to successfully care for a child?
Our underlying attitudes and unspoken priorities have a big influence on how we do
our job and relate to people.
Of course our first priority is to find safe, stable placements for children in care. But
no family or home is perfect. How do you decide which risks you can live with and which
you can’t? How do you decide which families you can develop and train, and which are
not worth the effort?
Our underlying attitudes
have a big influence on
how we do our job and
relate to people.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 30
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Many families in North Carolina have been denied placements by one agency only to
go on to successfully foster or adopt children from other agencies or even other states.
Agencies who successfully place children—especially those considered “hard to place”—
work collaboratively and creatively in partnership with families to address their needs
and build on their strengths.
We talk about being strengths-based all the time. Sometimes the reality is that we
don’t look very hard for strengths, and we are quick to rule out families based on
superficial needs.
For many of us, the ideal family looks a lot like our own. Of course, this kind of bias—
often unconscious and unintentional—occurs in all professions and types of people. We
tend to feel most comfortable with people who are most like us (Greenwald & Banaji,
1995; Phelps, et al., 2000). However, when making life-altering decisions about finding
homes for children, this kind of bias needs to be brought into the light and challenged.
In North Carolina, some families who wish to foster or adopt may be so different
from the social worker that it is hard to see their strengths. A family with limited formal
education may seem lacking to a social worker from a middle class, college-educated
background. A non-traditional family may seem inappropriate to a worker from a very
traditional family. But are these really the characteristics that make for good families?
The relative wealth of a family can also be a big influence. True, we need resource
families who can support themselves without an over-reliance on the small
reimbursement provided for taking care of children from the child welfare system. Yet
often there is a values-based decision about what is needed for a child to live happily
with a family.
It’s not that finances or beliefs shouldn’t play a part in the mutual home assessment;
it’s just that we need to recognize our own biases about money, social class, and
lifestyle. A family may not be just right for you personally, but they may be just right for
a child in need of a home.
Some child welfare professionals are “put off” when one of the
first questions a prospective resource family asks has to do
with financial compensation. Although social workers may feel
concerned—families’ primary reason for wanting to foster should not be money (or they
will be sorely disappointed!)—this is a good example of a time when it is important to
keep one’s biases in check. Given that many people deliberate a long time before
calling the agency, it is possible that they may have answered many of their other
questions (e.g., is their house large enough, how long is pre-service training, etc.). It
may be that financial questions are among the few they have not yet answered.
The point? Even if someone’s first question is about money, don’t assume they are
just “in it for the money.” Remember the principle of partnership that says, “Judgments
can wait.”
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 31
North Carolina Division of Social Services
This chapter is based in large part on the NC Coalition Against Domestic Violence’s Best Practices
Manual (2006): special thanks for granting us permission to reprint and adapt this material.
Community education and public awareness efforts are essential to recruiting and
retaining resource families—they increase the public’s awareness of the need for
resource families, create support for child welfare programs, and help us tap into
existing community strengths and resources.
Every resource family recruitment and retention program should have a community
education and public awareness plan. The plan should be simple yet creative, appeal to
specific audiences and be culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate. Essential
components of the plan include the goals and target audiences, messages, channels,
timeline, and budget. Plans should incorporate as many types of educational activities as
possible, including speaking engagements, development and distribution of materials,
and media campaigns. The plan should begin with thorough research and end with an
evaluation to measure success.
• Year-round campaigns are considered more effective than periodic
campaigns.
• Many people think about fostering for a
year or more and hear messages about
foster care 3 or 4 times before making an
initial inquiry call.
• The more frequently people are exposed to positive messages,
the more likely they are to call.
Source: Pasztor & Wynne, 1995
The primary focus of most community education and public awareness efforts will be on
encouraging people to consider stepping forward to explore becoming a resource
parent. Education efforts should also inform potential volunteers and other community
stakeholders (e.g., churches, civic clubs, etc.) about what they can do to support the
good work of your agency. Messages for education campaigns should be carefully
designed based on the needs of your agency and the needs of the children and families
you serve. Chapters VIII, IX, and X of this guide provide more information about the
audiences for general, targeted, and child-specific recruitment efforts.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 32
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Child welfare agencies can enhance recruitment of resource families by participating in
or sponsoring community education events. These events help build community
awareness and advertise the mission and services of the organization. Community
education events may also serve as fundraisers. (See Chapter III for more on
fundraising.) Often agencies partner with other community organizations in outreach
efforts, which increases the reach of their message and enhances interagency
collaboration. Common community education events include the following:
• Bills with foster care/adoption inserts
• Book club focus on foster care/adoption themes
• Candlelight vigils to promote awareness of child abuse
• Celebration around anniversaries, facility expansions, or high profile visitors
• Celebration of appreciation to community partners
• Community picnic or potluck
• Interfaith gathering
• Child welfare issue forums
• Marches
• Newspaper pledge in support of foster and adoptive parents signed by members
of community
• Participation in national campaigns, including Foster Care Month in May and
Adoption Awareness Month in November
• Faith organization-sponsored prayer or meditation services
• Proclamation signing ceremony
• Shopping bags or other containers with resource family recruitment messages
• Panels of former/current youth in foster care and/or resource families
Managing a Speakers Bureau
Resource families and former foster youth can be very effective speakers, especially if
they tell their own story. Some child welfare agencies run a speaker’s bureau that
includes people trained and prepared to speak about the need for resource families,
child welfare issues, and the organization. Speaker’s bureaus should
offer presentations in all languages spoken in the community.
Typically, the organization maintains records on speakers including
the following information:
• Name
• Mailing and e-mail addresses
• Telephone numbers (including mobile phone numbers)
• Scheduling preferences (day, night, week, weekend)
• Group preferences such as civic groups, youth, businesses, faith organizations,
or other specific populations
• Geographic preferences
• Speaker’s status as a resource parent or former foster child who will talk about
personal experience, if applicable
Resource families
and former foster
youth can be very
effective speakers.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 33
North Carolina Division of Social Services
A designated staff person or volunteer usually coordinates speaking engagements. They
will contact the speaker who is the best match based on the information above and keep
records of all speaking engagements.
SAYSO, which is North Carolina’s organization of current and former foster youth,
has members who have had experience making presentations that include “telling their
story.” Your county may have a local chapter of SAYSO, or you can contact them through
their website at www.saysoinc.org.
Speaker’s Bureau Records
It is important for organizations to keep records of all speaking engagements and to
evaluate the speakers. Following the speaking engagement, an evaluation and thank you
note should be sent or given to the group that requested the speaking engagement.
Other speaker’s bureau documentation may include the following information:
• Audience
• Contact person
• Mailing address
• Phone number and e-mail address
• Number of people in audience
• Volunteer time donated by speaker
• Date sent evaluation and thank you note to the group
• Date added group to mailing list, if requested
There are a variety of ways that your agency can educate the community through written
materials. These materials may be created in-house with the help of desktop publishing
software, contracted out to professional publishers, adapted with permission from a
neighboring county or partner agency, or obtained from national or regional campaigns.
To obtain posters, PSAs, and other promotional materials developed by the Ad Council
in cooperation with AdoptUsKids and the US Department of Health and Human Services,
go to http://www.adcouncil.org or http://www.adoptuskids.org.
When creating or reviewing drafts of printed materials it is important to consider the
following types of visual elements to make the materials more appealing to readers:
• Boxes, borders, backgrounds
• Capital letters, bold, italics, underlining
• Colors
• Graphics
• Headings, subheadings and captions
• Justification
• Photos that reflect diversity
• Sidebars and white space
• Spacing
• Typefaces
The agency’s logo should be placed on all printed education materials.
The following types of printed materials are commonly created and distributed by
resource family recruitment programs.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 34
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Brochures
The brochure should be written from the public’s point of view and be concise, action-oriented,
and focused on success and the future. Brochures might contain the following
information:
• Mission
• Statement describing the need, including basic information about the
characteristics of the children and families served
• Information about who is eligible and the process needed to become a foster or
adoptive parent
• Description of what the organization needs to fulfill its mission
• Description of how the reader may help
• Contact information
Matt Davies, a board member of the NC Foster and Adoptive Parent
Association, recommends that agencies
provide business cards to foster and adoptive
parents, who can then give them out to people
interested in learning more about becoming a
resource parent.
Fact Sheets
A fact sheet is a one-page document that offers statistics relating to foster care,
adoption, other child welfare issues, and information about services provided by the
organization. Information for fact sheets can be found at the Child Welfare Information
Gateway (http://www.childwelfare.gov/), the NC Division of Social Services website
(http://www.dhhs.state.nc.us/dss/), and the site “NC Child Welfare Program”
(http://ssw.unc.edu/cw/).
Newsletters
Organizations may publish a single newsletter or separate newsletters for the
volunteers, staff, and community. See Appendix M for a sample newsletter for resource
families from Nash County DSS. It is also important to contribute articles about foster
care and adoption to other organizations’ newsletters. Newsletters should look
professional and usually contain the following types of information:
• Mission statement
• Local and national information relating to foster care and adoption
• Program highlights and information about services offered
• Updates on adoption and foster care related statistics
• Recent and current events and projects
• Calendar of upcoming events
• Resource family, volunteer, or staff profiles
• Legislative information
• Information about partnerships with other organizations
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 35
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Organizational and individual honors received
• Hours of clothes closet, etc. (if applicable)
• Needs list
• New resources such as library materials
• Position announcements
• Contact information including the organization’s name, mailing address, editor’s
name, phone number and e-mail address
• Statement requesting address corrections and notification if receiving multiple
copies as well as a request for readers to contribute names and addresses for the
mailing list
Promotional Items and Advertisements
Promotional items might include posters, bookmarks, stickers, bumper stickers, pencils,
pens, T-shirts, mugs or other items with the agency’s logo and/or recruitment theme.
Additionally agencies may advertise on billboards, the inside and outside of buses, and
other locations.
Distribution of Printed Materials
Printed materials may be distributed in person, by mail, or electronically. An important
part of the program’s annual community education and public awareness plan is where
and how your materials will get distributed. Having this information discussed during
the planning process will be helpful when decisions need to get made about how much
material to have printed. It can also be helpful to discuss the production and
distribution of materials to coincide with large speaking engagements or display events
(such as community events, health fairs, etc.).
Personal Distribution
Written materials may be distributed through brochure stands at the agency, by handing
out at speaking engagements, and by posting at other organizations and businesses.
Some popular places to distribute information include the following:
• Apartment bulletin boards
• Businesses
• Doctors office waiting and exam rooms
• Grocery stores
• Information tables and booths at community fairs
• Laundry mats
• Post offices
• Public buildings
• Schools and libraries
Distribution by Mail
Printed materials may also be distributed by mail. Your community education plan
should address mailing expenses and guide staff in decisions about mass mailings. It is
important for mailing lists to be accurate, coded, and maintained on a database with
names, titles, addresses, phone and fax numbers, e-mail addresses, and notes about
previous contacts or conversations.
Electronic Distribution
All printed materials may also be distributed electronically through e-mail or web sites.
It is important for recruitment and retention staff to work carefully with electronic
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 36
North Carolina Division of Social Services
communications experts to ensure appropriate distribution. A quick way to distribute
materials for public use is to format your documents as pdf files, through Adobe
Acrobat. Storing files in Adobe Acrobat pdf format and keeping the original Microsoft
Word document (doc) in a safe place ensures that the document cannot be edited
unintentionally. Similarly, when distributing fliers or other announcements electronically,
attaching them as pdf files instead of doc files ensures that they cannot be modified by
the receiver.
To download a free copy of Adobe Acrobat
Reader, with which you can read pdf files,
visit:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/r
eadstep2.html. Install this application once you download it.
There are two free software programs you can download to
create pdf files:
• For PrimoPDF, visit: www.primopdf.com
• For Cute PDF Writer, visit:
http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/Writer.asp
After you have downloaded the software, to convert a Microsoft
Word document to pdf format, follow these steps:
1. Go to File menu
2. Choose Print
3. Next to “Printer Name,” click arrow so drop
down menu appears
4. Choose Adobe pdf1
It is important for resource family recruiters to understand the staffing of media
organizations and to keep current lists of media contacts. See Appendix N for a sample
format. The following positions are common contacts:
Television
• News directors
• Producers
• Editors
• Anchors
• Reporters
Radio
• Talk or Public Affairs directors
• Producers
1 This only works AFTER you have installed PDF software.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 37
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Hosts
• Reporters
• Bookers
Typically the structure at print media organizations includes editors and reporters who
write for newspapers, magazines, or web sites in the following topic areas:
• National events
• City or metro events
• Editorials
• Features
• Special topics such as child welfare issues
When planning media efforts, it is important to be aware that local stories may be
picked up by wire services and printed in state or national media outlets. Media pieces
may take on a variety of formats, several of which are outlined below.
Editorials
Editorials highlight a specific current issue, are usually 700 words or less and are written
in the format of a memorandum. Prior to creating an editorial, it is helpful to contact the
newspaper to inquire about any preferred formats or methods of submission. When
writing an editorial, it is important to express passion about the issue and use local, real
life examples. It is also helpful to include information about relevant laws or policies,
services and volunteer or donor opportunities in the local area. A strong editorial will
end with a call to action. Information about the author, such as his or her background
and affiliations, should accompany the editorial. A sample editorial from Guilford County
DSS can be found in Appendix O.
Feature Articles
A feature is a non-news piece of general interest to the public. Features often tell
someone’s story. DSS agencies have countless stories to tell that can educate and
motivate the public. Feature story ideas include:
• Volunteer opportunities for helping birth families and children in care
(donations, mentoring, providing respite care, becoming resource parents, etc.)
• A family who has fostered for many years or fostered or adopted a large number
of children
• A youth who found a family during his or her teen years
• The profile of a single foster mom
• A successful reunification that highlights shared parenting
• A family that has fostered more than one generation
• Available subsidies and supports for adopted children
Source: NACAC, 2001
See Appendix P for a sample feature story that celebrates a successful foster family
while also providing local statistics to highlight an agency’s needs.
Media Advisories or Alerts
A media advisory or alert serves as a reminder that an event is approaching. It should be
brief, with a headline, contact information, date, and details including the purpose, time,
and place of the event. It is also helpful to include an offer to set up interviews and
photo opportunities with key individuals.
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North Carolina Division of Social Services
Media Packets (Press Packets)
Media packets are distributed to media representatives who attend an event sponsored
by the organization. Staff generally meet with media representatives before the event
begins to discuss materials in the packet. Information that might be part of a media
packet includes the following items:
• Copy of press release
• Biographies of presenters and contact information
• Brief talking points
• Statistics related to foster care, adoption, or child welfare (fact sheet)
• Story ideas
• Brochure
• Recent news clippings
• Photos that are labeled with a caption and names of persons in the photo (with
their permission); black and white 5x7 photos are usually preferred
Press or Photo Opportunities
A press or photo opportunity is an event that is not planned specifically for the
media but might be covered by the media. Examples include fundraisers,
rallies, and other community events. It is important to be prepared for these
opportunities and plan who will address the media and what points will be
presented if the opportunity arises.
Press Releases
A press release highlights an upcoming event. Press releases are usually distributed the
day before the event and are addressed to a specific person. A press release should
describe who, what, why, when, where, and how in regards to the event being
publicized.
Press releases are typewritten on letterhead and double-spaced with a wide left
margin for editorial notes. These documents are typically 1 to 2 pages in length and
one-sided rather than printed front and back. If the press release is two pages, write
“Add one” on top of second page. If possible, provide suggestions for video or audio
footage to accompany the story. Appendix Q contains instructions for writing a press
release for a special event.
Public Service Announcements
Public service announcements (PSAs) typically offer information about the need for
foster or adoptive parents or special events. The PSA should be clear, concise, and
informational as well as emotional and answer who, what, why, when, where, and how.
A PSA is usually written by community education staff and forwarded to the
broadcaster along with a cover letter. The media type, date, description, length, and
contact information should appear on the top of the page and the PSA text should be
typed in uppercase letters. Standard spots are typically 10 seconds, 20 seconds, or 60
seconds. Each block of 10 seconds will equal approximately 20-25 words. Several
versions of different lengths might be created to accommodate different media spots.
Many organizations secure a local personality to donate their time as a reader or submit
pre-taped PSAs.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 39
North Carolina Division of Social Services
In partnership with AdoptUsKids, the Ad
Council has developed free, high quality
PSAs about adopting children from foster
care. Available in English and Spanish, they
direct viewers to the national AdoptUsKids hotline, which
routes callers to NC Kids for support, follow-up, and referral to
the appropriate county DSS. You can register for free with the
Ad Council and then view and download all of their PSAs at
http://psacentral.adcouncil.org/psacentral/signon.do.
The following excerpts, taken from interviews conducted by the Rural Success Project
(UNC, 2005), reflect the experiences, concerns, and advice of editors, reporters, and
rural child welfare agency directors.
The Media: Newspaper Editors and Reporters
“I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a press release [from our local DSS
agency]. They are good about responding to questions but don’t
initiate stories that might help the community.”
“We’re looking for stories that contain news and information which
can help our readers. If we’ve informed people to help them relieve
the stress of a crisis, then I feel like I’ve done my job. That is my
mission—to help people.”
“An overall discussion of the ground rules would be very helpful—especially when the
relationship is just beginning or changing with a new reporter or director. Both sides are
a little more cooperative when there is not a grenade already sitting on the table.”
“The director at the DSS here is informative and cooperative if I take the first step. If I
don’t approach the agency, I don’t get the information. It would be great if there was
someone who would keep in close contact with me to keep me informed.”
“If you want a good news story covered, you’re going to have to think of a bad news
angle. When writing a press release, talk about the problem and how the agency is
dealing with that problem.”
Rural Child Welfare Agency Directors
“I’ve learned that I have to make the news, I have to frame the picture, I have to shape
the story. Otherwise, the only information that would get out about DSS would be the
ugly stuff.”
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 40
North Carolina Division of Social Services
“You have to build a relationship with the media when there is not a crisis. Then when
something does happen—and it will happen—you have a better chance of getting your
side of the story out.”
“If the only time you communicate with the media is when there is a crisis, you will be
seen as a crisis agency. There’s an old saying – if you don’t create your image, one will
be created for you.”
Source: UNC, 2005
When a Reporter Calls
All agency employees should receive basic training on taking media
calls and directing these calls to designated staff members. Below are
suggestions for staff who respond to media contacts.
• Be available and respond quickly since reporters are often under tight time
frames.
• Determine the reporter’s name and the media source that they represent and
their contact information. You might offer to call back the reporter in order to
verify the legitimacy of the caller.
• If you need extra time or want to gain more control over the interview, get a list
of the reporter’s questions and say you will call back. Be sure to give a time that
you intend to call back and check with the reporter to make sure that the timing
will still allow them to make their deadline.
• Determine the reporter’s agenda including the story angle and know their
deadlines so you can assist in a timely manner.
• It is critical to maintain confidentiality when working with the media. Ask media
representatives to sign a confidentiality agreement before allowing them to visit
your agency.
• If you are not available for the interview or do not want to be interviewed it is
helpful to refer the reporter to another expert.
• If possible, meet with the reporter before the interview to discuss the story
angle, who else is being interviewed, and the length of the interview.
• Know the demographics of your audience and use this knowledge to plan the
most effective way to address them.
Tips for Interviews
During an interview it is important to convey a confident and helpful attitude and stay
focused on the message. Below are additional tips for participating in an interview.
• Inquire about when the interview will air or be published. The best time slots for
radio and television are typically the hours immediately before and after the work
day. Also ask if the interviewer has prepared questions or if there will be
questions from an audience.
• Review the program or other interviews by the same reporter before being
interviewed.
• Conduct role plays before the interview. Practice with people who can offer
support and constructive feedback.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 41
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• For television interviews, wear simple clothes and jewelry (solid colors are best)
and pay attention to your posture.
• To reduce the likelihood of being misquoted by print
media, you might provide a written statement
summarizing your main points.
• For radio interviews, pay special attention to verbal
punctuation—pace your speech and use pauses. This
will help the audience to remember what they hear.
• Keep a glass of water nearby.
• Know the main message you want to convey and repeat
it several times.
• Use everyday language rather than jargon or abbreviations.
• Remember what you say represents the organization and may be quoted—never
say anything you do not want repeated and remember that you are never really
“off the record.”
• Keep responses short and to the point. Answers should be about 30 to 45
seconds in length. Tie your responses back to main points.
• Give real life examples of the points you make while maintaining confidentiality.
• Be prepared to offer your thoughts and analysis and state clearly what is fact and
what is opinion.
• Use numbers rather than percentages, such as “one in four” rather than 25%.
• Do not introduce a topic you feel uncomfortable addressing.
• Never speak negatively about other organizations or individuals.
• If a reporter states incorrect information, restate the information correctly.
• If asked a question about a third party it is usually best to answer that you do
not wish to speculate.
• If asked a question with specific choices, remember that your answer is not
limited to those choices and offer a broader perspective if necessary.
• Never repeat a negative statement. Instead, replace it in your answer with a
positive point.
• After you get the point across, stop talking. Don’t ramble.
Maintaining Positive Media Relationships
Build ongoing relationships with the media and continuously thank them for their
support because they are an important partner in child welfare. Below are ideas for
creating and enhancing these relationships.
• Ensure the media is on your general mailing lists and invite them to attend
activities sponsored by the organization.
• Keep updated lists of media contacts. These lists may be obtained from press
associations.
• Ensure the media knows your organization’s contact persons and keep them
updated regarding any staff changes.
• Know the reporters in your area and their reputations.
• Inform yourself about local and national events and be prepared to present a
statement or grant an interview when a high profile child welfare incident occurs.
• Provide relevant data from your agency to educate and motivate readers.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 42
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Maintain a list of ideas for human interest stories involving the organization and
encourage the media to contact you when they are in need of a story.
• Maintain a list of resource families and/or foster care alumni who are available to
speak to the media.
• In case of a severe misquote or misprint, request a retraction or file a complaint
with the media source.
• Encourage the media to assist the organization by sponsoring education campaigns.
• Invite media representatives to participate in volunteer training or other
conferences or workshops.
• Encourage the media to spotlight foster care and adoption issues regularly rather
than only covering the sensational cases.
Preparing for a Media-Covered Crisis
Usually the media will be on your doorstep as soon as a crisis or problem occurs. Below
are some tips to help you prepare for a crisis before it happens.
• Written crisis procedures should designate persons responsible for investigating
and managing a crisis and describe who is authorized to serve as the
organization’s spokesperson.
• Recognize when a minor problem may turn into a crisis and plan ahead.
• When the crisis occurs, identify and assess issues and develop action plan.
• Be prepared to create a press release outlining how the organization will respond
to clients, staff, the public, funders, or others involved with the issue. Develop a
plan for interviews or other follow up activities. The agency director should
approve any formal statements before these are shared with the media.
• Try to anticipate specific questions from the media and prepare answers in advance.
• Keep a record of any requests for information and the organization’s responses.
Source: North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 2006
An important part of community education is the celebration of successes and the many
lives that are changed by the work of foster parents, adoptive parents, volunteers, and
child welfare staff. Celebrations might take place at local, statewide, or national gatherings.
Recognition categories might include any staff or volunteer positions as well as:
• Foster parents
• Adoptive parents
• Kinship parents
• Members of your speakers bureau
• Board or committee members
• Donors
• Funders
• Local and state government leaders
• Media companies or individuals
• Partner agencies, organizations, churches, etc.
• Statewide leaders
• Students or interns
• Visionaries
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 43
North Carolina Division of Social Services
When your recruitment and retention program is stretched for time and money, how can
you develop productive community relationships? This is one area where
time up front pays big dividends down the line. Here are some tips from
social workers in North Carolina:
• Make it a win-win. Figure out what you can offer to others in
exchange for help with recruitment and retention. A business’ name
and logo on all your materials? A local mission activity for churches?
Community service hours for local high school students?
• Find one person who will champion your cause. You need just one
person in an organization to get excited about helping children in
foster care, and that person will help you build the relationship over time. Is it
the preacher’s wife or the church secretary who knows how to get things done?
Can you set up a meeting with the reporter or editor responsible for covering
community events? Is there someone in a civic group who has personal
experience with foster care?
• Use the community education and public awareness material from Chapter VI
for your initial outreach to community groups. Be prepared to tell each group
specifically what you are asking them for. Remember, think beyond “foster
parents.” Then make sure that someone—resource parent, staff member, or
volunteer—will follow up and take the relationship to the next step.
• Schedule time in your calendar for building and maintaining community
relationships. It may be one hour a week or every other week, or one day a
month. In whatever way works for your agency, someone needs to have regularly
scheduled time to make sure relationships bear fruit and continue year after
year. It is not enough to send flyers to all the churches or schools in your county.
It’s the personal follow-up that makes the difference.
Thanks to Jeanne Preisler and Cumberland County DSS’ Sandra Robinson for contributing ideas for this section.
Agencies, especially those that are smaller or in rural areas, can greatly benefit from a
regional approach to recruiting, training, and retaining resource families. This will allow
agencies to share resources and increase the pool of foster homes for everyone
(USDHHS, 1995). Agencies can then make placement decisions based on the best match
for a child, rather than placing children wherever they happen to have an open bed.
How might your agency collaborate with others in the same region?
• Offer joint MAPP/GPS classes (each agency hosts 1 or 2 classes per year that are
open to families from the other agencies)
• Share information about available foster and adoptive homes on a regular basis
(see information about existing collaborations below)
Investing
community
relationships
today pays
big dividends
later.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 44
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Have a joint Recruitment & Retention Committee that funds and plans
recruitment, in-service training, and appreciation events. You can use existing
interagency committees, collaboratives, or other groups to lead this effort.
Who Should Be on a Regional R & R Committee?
• DSS and private agency recruitment, licensing, and foster care professionals
• DSS and private agency supervisors and program managers
• Resource families
• Youth in care
• Community members with experience and connections in relevant fields such as:
— Media relations
— Marketing/public relations
— Fundraising
— Local government
— Local busine

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Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families i
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families i
North Carolina Division of Social Services
.................................................................................................1
I. The Fundamentals .....................................................................................3
II. Assessing, Planning, and Evaluating Your Efforts..................................10
III. Funding Your Efforts ...............................................................................15
IV. Diversity...................................................................................................20
V. Engaging Families from the First Contact ..............................................27
VI. Community Education and Public Awareness.........................................31
VII. Community Alliance Building ..................................................................43
VIII. General Recruitment ................................................................................46
IX. Targeted Recruitment..............................................................................51
X. Child-Specific Recruitment ......................................................................57
XI. Key Players in Resource Family Recruitment and Retention..................66
XII. Training as a Recruitment and Retention Strategy.................................74
XIII. Retention of Resource Families...............................................................81
Bibliography ......................................................................................................85
.......................................................................................................88
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families ii
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Introduction
About this Manual.................................................................................... 1
Why We Say “Resource Families”............................................................... 1
Words of Thanks...................................................................................... 2
I. The Fundamentals
1. Resource Families: Partners, Not Employees ........................................ 3
2. Characteristics of a Successful Program............................................... 4
3. Importance of Agency Leadership........................................................ 5
4. How Agency Staff Can Contribute ........................................................ 7
II. Assessing, Planning, and Evaluating Your Efforts
1. Use a Committee to Grow Your Program............................................ 10
2. Step 1: Where Are You Now? .............................................................. 10
3. Step 2: What Are Your Greatest Priorities?.......................................... 13
4. Step 3: Develop and Apply Your Agency’s MEPA Plan......................... 14
III. Funding Your Efforts
1. Developing a Budget .......................................................................... 15
2. Community Partnerships/Sponsorships ............................................. 15
3. Grants................................................................................................ 17
4. Use of NC’s Special Child Adoption Fund ........................................... 18
5. Fundraising........................................................................................ 18
6. Where Should the Money Go? ............................................................. 19
IV. Diversity
1. Inclusive Language ............................................................................ 20
2. Non-English Speaking Resource Families............................................ 21
3. Interpreters........................................................................................ 22
4. Deaf and Hard of Hearing Resource Families...................................... 23
5. American Indian Resource Families.................................................... 24
6. Training for Cultural Sensitivity.......................................................... 25
V. Engaging Families from the First Contact
1. When Families Initiate Contact ........................................................... 27
2. Where Families Get Lost ..................................................................... 27
3. Common Mistakes ............................................................................. 28
4. Winning Strategies ............................................................................. 28
5. Screening Families “In” vs. “Screening Out” ........................................ 29
6. Keeping Our Own Preferences in Check ............................................. 30
VI. Community Education and Public Awareness
1. Community Education Planning ......................................................... 31
2. Purposes and Target Audiences ......................................................... 31
3. Community Education Events............................................................. 32
4. Speaking Engagements ...................................................................... 32
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families iii
North Carolina Division of Social Services
5. Printed and Electronic Educational Materials ...................................... 33
6. Media Relations ................................................................................. 36
7. What Media Representatives & DSS Directors Say ............................... 39
8. Media Interviews ................................................................................ 40
9. Celebrating Successes........................................................................ 42
VII. Community Alliance Building
1. Community Relationships .................................................................. 43
2. The Regional Approach...................................................................... 43
3. One Church – One Child Initiative ...................................................... 44
4. NC Kids Adoption and Foster Care Network ....................................... 45
VIII. General Recruitment
1. Purpose ............................................................................................. 46
2. General Recruitment Ideas ................................................................. 46
3. Use of Regional Approach to Recruitment ......................................... 48
4. Common Mistakes ............................................................................. 49
5. Winning Strategies ............................................................................. 49
IX. Targeted Recruitment
1. Purpose ............................................................................................. 51
2. How to Do Targeted Recruitment ....................................................... 51
3. Examples of Targeted Recruitment for Teenagers.............................. 52
4. Examples of Targeted Recruitment for Sibling Groups ....................... 53
5. Common Mistakes ............................................................................. 55
6. Winning Strategies ............................................................................ 55
7. Sponsorship Ideas for Targeted Recruitment...................................... 56
X. Child-Specific Recruitment
1. Purpose ............................................................................................. 57
2. Selecting and Preparing Youth ........................................................... 58
3. Examples of Child-Specific Recruitment ............................................. 60
4. Family Finding Project........................................................................ 63
5. Winning Strategies ............................................................................. 64
6. Sponsorship Ideas for Child-Specific Recruitment ............................. 65
XI. Key Players in Resource Family Recruitment and Retention
1. Agency Director ................................................................................ 66
2. Supervisors and Program Managers ................................................... 68
3. Child Protective Services Workers ...................................................... 69
4. Children’s Social Workers .................................................................. 69
5. Other Agency Staff ............................................................................ 71
6. Youth in Foster Care ......................................................................... 71
7. Current Resource Families ................................................................. 72
8. The NC Division of Social Services...................................................... 73
XII. Training as a Recruitment and Retention Strategy
1. Pre-Service Training ........................................................................... 74
2. In-Service Training ............................................................................. 75
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families iv
North Carolina Division of Social Services
3. Targeted In-Service Training Topics ................................................... 76
4. Developing a Strong In-Service Training Program............................... 77
5. Training for Kinship Caregivers.......................................................... 78
6. Using Conferences for Training.......................................................... 79
7. Using Fostering Perspectives for Training .......................................... 80
8. Using Support Group Meetings for Training....................................... 80
XIII. Retention of Resource Families
1. Purpose ............................................................................................. 81
2. The Foundation of Retention.............................................................. 81
3. Retention Efforts for Before the First Placement ................................. 84
4. Retention Efforts for New Resource Families ..................................... 84
5. Common Mistakes ............................................................................. 84
Bibliography...................................................................................................... 85
Appendix
A. Expectations of Families ................................................................... 89
B. Expectations of Staff......................................................................... 90
C. Key Definitions ................................................................................. 91
D. Links to State and National Recruitment Resources .......................... 93
E. New Caller Intake Form..................................................................... 94
F. Sample Tracking Table ..................................................................... 95
G. Annual Resource Parent Survey......................................................... 96
H. Resource Family Stay Interviews ...................................................... 98
I. Resource Family Exit Interviews ....................................................... 99
J. MEPA Plan Template ....................................................................... 100
K. Participation Letter to Community Supporters ................................ 105
L. Talking Points for Engaging New Callers......................................... 106
M. Newsletter for Resource Families .................................................... 108
N. Media Contact List .......................................................................... 114
O. Editorial.......................................................................................... 115
P. Feature Article ................................................................................ 116
Q. Instructions for Writing a Press Release .......................................... 117
R. One Church – One Child Program Newsletter.................................. 118
S. Adoption Party Resources............................................................... 122
T. Training Design Worksheet............................................................. 124
U. Checklist for Developing Training for Kinship Care Providers ......... 125
V. Recipe Cards for Your Resource Family R & R Program
1. Using Foster Parents and Teens as Recruiters ................... 128
2. Recruitment Parties...........................................................130
3. Child-Specific Publicity: Heart Gallery ............................... 131
4. Child-Specific Publicity: PowerPoint Slide Shows
Created by Teens.............................................................. 132
5. A Successful Model of Adoption Support ......................... 134
6. Teen Panel at MAPP/GPS Classes....................................... 135
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families v
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Starting Out on the Same Page..............................................................................4
Common Traits of Successful Resource Family R & R Programs.............................5
Improving Collaboration within the Agency...........................................................9
Developing Your Current Resource Families........................................................12
What Is a Stay Interview? .....................................................................................13
Information for Developing Your Program and Setting Goals ..............................14
Don’t Know Where to Start with Fundraising in Your Community?.......................16
Ideas for Partnering with Community Groups on Your Program Goals.................17
How to Find or Apply for a Grant ........................................................................17
Resources for Working with Spanish-Speaking Families.......................................22
Recruiting American Indians: It's All About Relationships....................................25
Using Culturally-Sensitive Recruitment to Meet the Needs of All Children ...........26
Partnering with Your Resource Families to Make that
Personal Connection ...........................................................................................28
Examining Our Assumptions about Money and Motivation..................................30
Things to Consider When Planning a Campaign ..................................................31
Giving Resource Families Business Cards ............................................................34
Working with PDFs ..............................................................................................36
Free Public Service Announcements ....................................................................39
Let NC Kids Help You! .........................................................................................45
Using Community Marquees ...............................................................................47
Targeted Recruitment: Your Current Families Can Help.......................................51
Child-Specific Recruitment: First You Have to Believe ..........................................57
Child-Specific Recruitment: One Perspective on Preparing the Child....................60
A Youth-Directed Recruitment Resource..............................................................62
Making the Most of Child and Family Team Meetings..........................................63
How Resource Families Affect CFSR Outcomes....................................................66
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families vi
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Core Messages Directors Should Send about Resource Family
Recruitment and Retention..................................................................................67
Supervisors and Managers: Whose Problem Is It? ................................................68
The Core of Concurrent Planning ........................................................................70
Other Agency Staff: Share the Passion.................................................................71
Talking with Prospective Resource Families: What to Say
When the Fit’s Not Right .....................................................................................75
Advice about In-Service Training .........................................................................76
Spread the Word about NC Reach........................................................................76
Foster Parents Comment on In-Service Training ..................................................79
Retention Facts and Figures ................................................................................81
A Respite Building Resource................................................................................82
Five Things Your Agency Can Do To Support a Local
Foster Parent Association....................................................................................83
Benefits of Improving Resource Family Retention................................................84
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families 1
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Treat your resource families like gold.
Though this guide provides many specific strategies that have proven effective in
North Carolina and elsewhere, at its heart is one basic rule: if you want to successfully
recruit, retain, and partner with resource families, treat them like gold. This rule must
be the foundation of your resource family recruitment and retention (R & R) efforts.
Why should we treat foster, adoptive, and kinship families like gold? Because without
them, life is harder for the families and children we serve, for individual workers, and for
our agencies. Without them, we have a much more difficult time keeping siblings
together and placing children in their communities. In truth, good foster, adoptive, and
kinship families are worth more than gold—they’re priceless.
This is strangely easy to forget. In child welfare we face a host of legal and policy
mandates, complex procedures, and the ongoing challenge of discerning and pursuing
the best interests of each individual child and family. Specialization helps agencies
manage these challenges, but it can also obscure the connection between resource
families and our ability to ensure the safety, well-being, and permanence of children.
When this happens, some of us begin to see support and development of resource
families as “someone else’s job” and resource families themselves as almost a nuisance.
Recruiting, supporting, and partnering with foster parents and other resource families
is a responsibility shared by everyone in the agency, from the director on down to
transportation aides. We must all understand our responsibility to treat them like gold.
Treating resource families like gold can take many forms, including taking the time
to get to know them, treating them as peers on the team serving the child and family,
helping them develop their skills and knowledge to care for children, and simply
showing them the respect they deserve for the pivotal role they play in our system.
This guide, developed by the NC Division of Social Services and the Jordan Institute
for Families at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work, seeks to give you tools and
strategies you and your agency can use to build, refine, and sustain partnerships with
resource families. We hope you find it useful.
Foster families. Adoptive families. Relatives who provide
kinship care. Legal guardians. In this guide and in an increasing
number of agencies, all these are referred to as “resource
families.” The term refers to anyone who provides a safe,
stable, loving home for a child when the child’s birth parents
are unable to provide one.
Why use this term? We need to think more broadly about
potential families and children’s needs. All kinds of families are
needed for children in foster care. Sometimes children need
families who can play multiple roles over time.
Instead of dividing families into categories, we are choosing
to use a term that leaves the possibilities as open as possible.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide for Partnering with Resource Families 2
North Carolina Division of Social Services
In fall 2007 the NC Division of Social Services launched a resource parent recruitment
and retention project based on the strategies recommended by best practice and
research. This project concentrates on the application of broad but concrete steps that
individual agencies can take to meet their specific needs, and it builds on the success of
the North Carolina’s Multiple Response System and reinforces the strengths of our
state’s child welfare system. Because recruiting and retaining resource families is
fundamentally a community responsibility, counties or clusters of counties are
encouraged to use existing interagency committees, collaboratives, and other groups to
lead this effort on the local level. The Division has asked the Jordan Institute for Families
at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work to help implement this project.
The NC Division of Social Services would like to thank the following people for their
contributions to this guide:
FROM THE DIVISION’S CHILD WELFARE SERVICES SECTION
Debbie Gallimore
Bob Hensley
Jeff Olson*
Tamika Williams
FROM THE JORDAN INSTITUTE FOR FAMILIES, UNC-CHAPEL HILL SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK
Mellicent O’Brien Blythe John McMahon
MEMBERS OF THIS GUIDE’S ADVISORY PANEL
Carrie Lauterbach
Appalachian Family Innovations
Ruth Amerson
Another Choice for Black Children
Stacey Darbee
NC Foster and Adoptive Parent Assoc.
Alisha Davis
Buncombe County DSS
Diane Delafield
Under One Sky
Regina Freeman
Gaston County DSS
Jon Hunter
Rowan County DSS
Valerie Kelly-Johnson
NC Kids Adoption and Foster Care
Network
Brigitte Lindsay
Forsyth County DSS
Carolyn McGill
Another Choice for Black Children
Katrina McMasters
Guilford County DSS
Jeanne Preisler
Jamestown, NC
Tiffany Price
UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work
Hildagene Reid
Guilford County DSS
Regina Roberts
Catawba County DSS
Christina Wooten
McDowell County DSS
*“Treat Them Like Gold” in the title came from Jeff Olson—it’s been his mantra for years. Thanks, Jeff!
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 3
North Carolina Division of Social Services
A common assumption people make is that resource families—in particular foster
parents—are employees of the agency that supervises them. This is understandable,
since on the face of things foster parents might seem to fit the
definition of an employee: someone hired to perform a job in
exchange for financial compensation. After all, once they undergo
the interviews and scrutiny of the licensing process and have
children placed in their homes, foster parents receive a check each
month. And, like other DSS employees, foster parents are bound by
the same expectations of protecting clients’ confidential
information.
But this idea of foster parents as agency employees does not
hold up. The money they receive each month is not wages but a
partial reimbursement that enables them to meet the needs of the
children in their homes. This is underscored by the fact that as a rule state and federal
governments do not consider monthly foster care reimbursements as taxable income
(NFPA, 2007). A few other characteristics that make foster parents different from other
agency employees include:
• They do not get the same pay increases received by agency employees
• They do not get benefits received by agency employees (e.g., health
insurance, paid time off and sick days, worker’s compensation,
unemployment benefits, pension, use of agency car, etc.)
• They are always on the job, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
Resource families are not agency employees, nor are they temporary workers.
But if they aren’t employees, what are they? The answer, of course, is partners:
people who join with others to pursue a common interest or goal. In their case—and
ours—that common goal is the welfare of children and their families. If we explain
things well enough in marketing materials, orientations, and pre-service training, foster
parents and other resource families enter into partnership with our agencies voluntarily
and fully-informed about the various roles they will play, which include one or more of
the following:
1. Caring for and nurturing children in foster care until they can be reunited
with their parents
2. Working as reunification partners with birth families (i.e., engaging in shared
parenting and maintaining connections)
3. Serving as members of the team: working closely with county departments of
social services to ensure child safety, well-being, and permanence
4. Becoming an alternative permanent family for the child, if reunification isn’t
possible (i.e., engaging in concurrent planning)
When you add all this up—the hours, the pay and benefits (or lack thereof), the multiple
and complex roles they play—it is clear that resource families make a remarkable
commitment when they decide to join in partnership with child welfare agencies.
Resource families
make a
remarkable
commitment
when they decide
to partner with
child welfare
agencies.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 4
North Carolina Division of Social Services
To support resource families and fulfill their side of the partnership, child welfare
agencies should:
• Ensure that all staff members understand the connection between the overall
success of the agency and the agency’s ability to attract, train, and support
qualified resource families
• Apply North Carolina’s family-centered principles of partnership when
interacting with resource families:
— Everyone desires respect
— Everyone needs to be heard
— Everyone has strengths
— Judgments can wait
— Partners share power
— Partnership is a process
• Apply North Carolina’s System of Care principles when interacting with
resource families:
— Individualized, strengths-based care
— Cultural competency
— Family and youth involvement
— Accountability
— Community-based services
— Interagency collaboration
To be sure, doing this takes some effort, but it pays off.
Another Choice for Black Children, a private
child-placing agency based in Charlotte,
NC, makes an effort to ensure its staff and
current and prospective resource families
are on the same page—literally! Another Choice has developed a
two-sided handout: one side describes what the agency expects of
families, while the other describes what families can expect of
agency staff in return.
The handout is used during staff orientations, in parent
orientation and trainings, and on an ongoing basis to ensure that
each party remembers and lives up to its commitments.
Agencies may adopt these handouts (see Appendix A and B)
for their own use.
Like every person and every family, each agency’s program to recruit, retain, and partner
with resource families is unique. That said, it is also true that some of the most
successful programs share one or more of the traits in the table below. Each row in the
table describes a trait and lists the page where you can learn more about it.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 5
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Program Characteristic
To Learn More Go
To Page(s)
Everyone in the agency sees it as his or her job to contribute to the
recruitment and retention of resource families.
5, 6, 67
The agency uses current resource families as much as possible in their
recruitment and retention efforts.
72
The agency uses culturally-sensitive recruitment strategies to meet the
needs of all children.
26
The agency uses data to regularly plan and evaluate recruitment and
retention efforts.
10-14
(Chapter II)
The agency uses the media to enhance the agency’s profile in the
community.
31-42
(Chapter VI)
The agency partners with other agencies to collaborate across county lines
to optimize outcomes.
43-44, 48-49,
78
The agency uses targeted recruitment efforts (e.g., to find homes for teens,
African American children, American Indian children, etc.) to meet the
specific needs and reflect the characteristics of children in care.
51-56
(Chapter IX)
For key definitions of basic terms and concepts related to recruiting, retaining, and
partnering with resource families, refer to Appendix C.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. In Appendix D you will find a list of recommended
resources from across North Carolina and the nation that provide useful templates,
short cuts, and suggestions.
In a child welfare agency, finding and supporting families for children in foster care is
everyone’s job. Yet some people have more important roles to play than others.
Agency leadership—especially the agency director—sets the tone for the entire
agency. When it comes to recruiting and retaining resource families, the impact of the
director’s attitude can be profound.
What the director does and does not say and do sends a message to staff at all
levels. If the director sees resource family recruitment and retention as central to the
agency’s success and communicates this belief through word and deed, most people
come to see things the same way.
Here are some examples of concrete steps agency leaders can take to strengthen
recruitment and retention:
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 6
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Get to know the resource families who care for the children in your custody. Be
sure that you understand what foster, adoptive, and kinship families do, and
make it clear to them that you understand the importance of their role.
• Be friendly to resource families. Model positive, respectful interactions with
resource families when you see them in the building, at meetings, or in public.
• Be available to speak with families upon request. Front line workers should be
responsible for most exchanges with resource families, and for building the trust
that is necessary for a successful working relationship with them. However, it can
be reassuring to both workers and resource families to know that directors are
always available if outside brainstorming is needed or to help problem solve a
specific situation. At the same time, avoid over involvement—if a director is too
involved, a direct worker can be disempowered.
• Give out your contact information. Any time you have contact with a foster,
adoptive, or kinship family, give them your contact information so they can reach
you directly for help if necessary.
• Consider resource families in all you do, from writing policy to writing a
memo. Include the foster, adoptive, and kinship family perspective in all
materials you produce, all speeches you give, all meetings you have with those
you supervise, and any time you interact with the community.
• Send a clear and consistent message about recruiting,
retaining, and partnering with resource families at every
employee’s orientation, regardless of the person’s role.
Encourage everyone in the agency to attend resource family
pre-service training. Regularly report your agency’s strengths
and needs related to resource families using posters, your
agency’s newsletter, presentations during general staff
meetings, etc.
• Make your priorities clear. Demonstrate that support of foster, adoptive, and
kinship families is an agency priority by including it in the job descriptions and
evaluations of all staff; make it a factor in determining promotions and raises.
• Financially support your agency’s recruitment and retention efforts. Doing
so makes sense, given the costs of having too few resource families. Financial
support can take many forms, including offering recruitment incentives to
current foster families and agency staff, funding respite and in-service training
programs, providing longevity payments to foster families, paying for ads and
promotional materials, or other creative measures. Budget to support resource
family retention. Consistently set aside money for appreciation events, snacks
during training, thank you cards and other little demonstrations that the agency
values resource families.
• Encourage communication among various agency programs about resource
family recruitment, retention, and partnership issues.
Make it part of
your agency’s
culture to treat
resource
families like
gold.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 7
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Look for patterns in problems. If you repeatedly hear the same problem
scenario reported as occurring to different families, its likely there is an agency-or
system-wide problem.
• Speak positively about resource families. Give them the credit they deserve
publicly. Always remind others that your agency could not function without
them. Do not allow staff to speak negatively about resource families.
• Support the development and full implementation your agency’s MEPA plan.
• Use your contacts to help recruit and support families. If you have a friend or
family member who can offer a reward to resource families (e.g., a discount at a
store or restaurant, a free manicure, or a larger donation), use your personal
influence to make it happen.
• Insist that your staff treat resource families with dignity and respect. Make it
part of your agency’s culture to treat resource families like gold.
Adapted from Goodman, 2008
• Return phone calls promptly! Families need to have
their calls returned in a timely fashion to provide
excellent care to our children. Provide information
resource families can use to contact alternative agency
representatives (e.g., supervisors) in the event that you
cannot be reached.
• Give them information. Provide full disclosure
regarding the background and needs of the child. Keep resource families
informed about the child’s situation and provide updated information about the
child’s needs. Provide them with feedback.
• Be flexible in making appointments with and for resource families. Work with
foster parents when planning home visits, meetings, or appointments for the
child. Families have schedules, too!
• Include foster parents in permanency planning for the child. Foster parents
should be included in discussions and meetings to share ideas about possible
permanent families for the child. Invite them to court hearings, child and family
team meetings, other meetings, and reviews.
• Provide support and communication during CPS investigative assessments.
It may also be useful to cultivate a trained “allegation support” foster parent or
other person to offer support to families, even if it is only listening. Providing
resource parents with support and information during an investigative
assessment can have a big impact on that family’s willingness to continue
fostering if the report is unsubstantiated.
• Be sensitive to foster parents when a child is leaving. Even if foster parents
have decided not to adopt, they still care about the child.
Families must have
their calls returned in
a timely fashion to
provide excellent
care to our children.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 8
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Gather information about the child from the foster parents. Foster parents
are the best informants about the day-to-day needs of the child. Ask them to give
you information that can help identify the best family for the child and make the
child’s transition smoother.
• Help foster parents adopt if that is the plan. Many children are adopted by
their foster parents. They may need the help of the adoption worker in making
that big decision.
• Be responsive. When there is a crisis or concern, be responsive. Return the call,
go to the home, and find the service they need as soon as possible.
• Follow up with interested families. When a family expresses an interest in
fostering or adopting, get back to them as soon as possible.
• Promote stable placements. Provide ongoing support, planned respite, and
needed services to families to prevent a disruption or crisis from happening
before it is too late!
• Educate and support other agency staff. Enhance the experience of resource
families by contributing to efforts to ensure all agency staff are on the same
page when it comes to resource families. Your contribution can be made in any
number of ways—from short, formal training sessions with the people in your
agency who answer the phones to informal exchanges in which you model and
communicate the important role that resource families play and the respect they
are due.
Adapted from Goodman, 2008
• Process paperwork and payments efficiently and without delay. Help social
workers complete forms correctly on the front-end. It is crucial to retention and
placement stability that children get needed services and resource families get
needed reimbursements.
• Look for patterns and problems with paperwork,
eligibility and funding issues—these impact the services
children and families receive. Problem-solve and
troubleshoot to keep the system running smoothly!
• Participate in resource family appreciation events,
make a nomination for “Foster Parent of the Year,” help
plan events.
• Facilitate connections. If you receive a phone call from a foster, adoptive, or
kinship parent, transfer the call to someone who can help them immediately with
their issue or need.
• Pitch in. Identify possible venues for recruitment efforts (e.g., churches, civic
groups), participate in recruitment events, and distribute recruitment materials in
your neighborhood.
• Say “Thanks.” If you see a foster parent in your building or in the community,
thank them for what they do for our children.
Adapted from Goodman, 2008
When resource
families call, if at all
possible, transfer
them to a live person
who can help them.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 9
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Spread the word. Inform relevant agency staff and families themselves of any
training that would benefit resource parents. Give timely notice and good
directions so foster parents can plan ahead.
• Choose training sites carefully. Use convenient facilities with free parking.
• Be family-friendly. Work with others in your agency and community to arrange
or provide child care so that families can attend training.
• Feed them. Buy good snacks so foster parents feel special!
• Listen and respond. Take seriously the evaluations resource families complete.
Follow up on their suggestions and requests.
• Be a good host. Be courteous to foster parents in your building, help them find
the restrooms, specific staff members, or meeting room.
• Promote conference attendance. Encourage foster parents to attend the annual
North Carolina Foster and Adoptive Parent Association conference.
• Make training fun. Create a welcoming atmosphere in the training room. Meet
and greet foster parents as they enter. Help them have an enjoyable experience!
• Ensure training matters. Advocate for and arrange trainings you hear foster
parents request/suggest or you think would benefit foster parents. Make sure
the training is practical and offers concrete suggestions they can use at home.
• Promote partnership and understanding by encouraging social workers (child
placement, adoption, CPS) to attend trainings with foster parents.
Adapted from Goodman, 2008
Chapter XI of this guide provides more information about what directors, program
managers, and many other folks inside and outside the agency can do to support
recruitment and retention of resource families.
Enhancing relationships with foster parents is crucial to
getting and keeping them. This cannot be left solely to
licensing workers. Many other agency workers have contact
with families, and these interactions have a large influence on the families’ feelings
about the agency (AdoptUsKids, n.d.). Improving collaboration and communication
across the agency can be done in a number of ways, including the following:
• Holding facilitated dialogues with agency staff and foster parents, in order to
clarify misconceptions and determine what works well in current practice and
what doesn’t
• Providing training to all agency staff about confidentiality, since misconceptions
about what can and can’t be told to foster parents is a major contributor to
foster parent dissatisfaction
• Including child-placing staff and supervisors in any foster parent recognition efforts
Source: Casey Family Programs, 2005; Rodger, et al., 2006
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 10
North Carolina Division of Social Services
You can’t decide where you’re going until you know where you are. Take the time to
assess your needs, plan your efforts, and evaluate how you’re doing—it will pay off with
more effective and lasting changes.
To sustainably recruit and retain families for children, you need a
recruitment program, not a recruitment person. A committee of
agency and community stakeholders can most effectively grow your
program. Here are some tips for forming and focusing your
committee:
• Include at least one program manager so the committee has
enough clout to get things done.
• Include at least one current resource parent and one youth
currently or previously in care and, if possible, one birth parent.
• Include community members who reflect the children in care.
• One of the committee’s goals will be getting community members with expertise
in relevant areas such as media relations, marketing, and fundraising to join the
committee.
Here are some of the things you need to understand to begin assessing where your
resource family recruitment and retention program is right now.
• Profile of children in foster care in your county, including:
— How many there are
— Demographic profile (consider age, ethnicity, sibling groups, etc.)
— What neighborhoods or areas of the community (e.g., zip codes) they are
from
— Other characteristics, such as services needed or other special needs
— Where they are placed
• Profile of your agency’s resource families, including:
— How many there are
— Demographic profile
— The neighborhoods or areas of the community in which they live
— Kinds of children they are currently willing to care for (consider age,
ethnicity, special needs, etc.)
— Capacity of their homes
— How many are currently in use
You can’t
decide where
you’re going
until you know
where you
are.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 11
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Qualitative data on your agency’s strengths and needs
— What do your resource families think your agency does well?
— What do resource families think are your agency’s greatest needs or areas
for improvement?
— How can your resource families contribute to your agency’s efforts?
— What do agency staff members see as the agency’s strengths and needs
related to resource family recruitment and support?
— How can staff outside the licensing/recruitment unit contribute to your
agency’s efforts?
• Data on what’s working right now—your agency’s successful recruitment and
retention methods.
Ask prospective resource families who call your agency
— How did you hear about us? What made you decide to call today?
This tells you which methods generate the most calls.
Ask your current resource families:
— How did you hear about us? What made you decide to become a foster or
adoptive parent?
This tells you which marketing approaches are most successful in
recruiting people who make it through the licensing process.
See the Appendix E for a sample intake form for new callers and
Appendix F for a sample table to track responses. You can also
download Appendix F as an Excel file by clicking here.
— What does our agency do to keep you working with us as a resource family?
This tells you which retention methods are most successful.
By gathering data from the experts in your system, and by comparing the profile of the
children in foster care and to your current resource families, you can determine what
your greatest needs are. This will determine how to prioritize your efforts and funding.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 12
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Many licensed foster homes are empty or underused. A
survey found that 35% of licensed homes had no
children placed in them (Cox, et al. 2002). Research
suggests that a major factor in under-use of foster homes
is that families who become licensed are often unable or
unwilling to care for the majority of young people needing care: school-age
and adolescent children, and children with special needs (USDHHS, 2002).
Anecdotal evidence suggests this is happening in North Carolina. Some families
want only young children; some say they only want children of a certain race;
still others are interested only in adoption.
Conversely, research shows that families who express a willingness to
foster “difficult to place” children are more likely to have children placed with
them, foster more children overall, and foster longer (Cox, et al., 2002).This
raises important questions for your efforts:
• How many resource families in your county are unused? What are the
reasons behind this?
• What training and support can you give to prospective and current
resource parents so they feel more competent and willing to care for
the children who need homes? Ask your licensed resource families
who don’t currently have placements: what training or support would
make you feel more comfortable about caring for these children?
• In other cases, what training and support may be needed so that
agency staff can feel confident that your licensed families are
competent and prepared to care for these children?
• What groups or communities can you target who might be willing to
care for these children? What is the best way to do this?
Here are some suggestions for sources you might consult or create to help assess your
agency’s recruitment and retention of resource families:
Quantitative Data
• NC Child Welfare Program (http://ssw.unc.edu/cw/). This site allows you to
search a wealth of data on demographics and outcomes for children in care in
your county, and to compare your county to others of the same size or to the
state as a whole.
• Simple Resource Family Tracking Spreadsheet. Use a spreadsheet or table to
maintain a profile of your current resource families (see Appendix F).
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 13
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Qualitative Data
• Annual resource family survey (see Appendix G for sample)
• Annual staff survey
• Foster parent stay interviews (see Golden Nugget box below and Appendix H for
tips and sample questions)
• Foster parent exit interviews (see Appendix I for tips and sample questions)
• Agency roundtable with resource families and staff
A “stay interview” is a conversation designed
to find out what makes a resource family stay
in the program and what might make them
leave. It is a way to proactively gather information about what is
working well in the partnership and where improvements could be
made. Stay interviews can help determine what kind of
acknowledgement, training, support, or problem-solving can be done
to keep families fostering and developing (Kaye & Jordan-Evans, 2005).
Once you’ve assessed where you are in terms of children needing homes and homes
available, set specific recruitment and retention goals and
priorities. This will help focus everyone’s time and attention,
and it will help you see what’s working and what’s not.
Setting goals for a program requires the same rule of
thumb as setting goals with a family: your goals should be
realistic, objective, and measurable. If the goals are
unrealistically high, people will get frustrated and give up. Ask
yourself: if this is our goal, how will we know we’ve achieved
it? How will we know we’re making progress?
Of course, how much you can achieve also depends on the resources your agency
and community can devote to the recruitment and retention of resource families. The
table below includes some priorities for agencies of different sizes, sample goals, and
where you can find related information in this guide.
Your goals
should be
realistic,
objective, and
measurable.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 14
North Carolina Division of Social Services
If Your Priority Is . . . Your Goal Might Be…
See
Page
Creating a recruitment and retention
committee
Committee of x# of people will meet
monthly and recruit 2 community
members in next 3 months
10
Gathering data to assess your
program
Conduct survey of foster parents and
gather profile data of youths and homes in
next 3 months
10
Getting participation from others in
the agency
All staff will be evaluated and given flex
time for their participation in recruitment
and support activities in 1 year
7, 11
Finding more families for teens x# of additional families for teens in 1
year
52
Finding more families for children
with medical needs
x# of additional families for medically
needy children in 1 year
52
Finding more families for siblings x# of additional families for siblings in 1
year 53
Licensing more families of any kind x# of additional families in 1 year 10
Collaborating with other counties/
private agencies to pool resources
Convene regional planning meeting with
agency directors/managers in 3 months
43-44
Developing and supporting current
families to take children in need of
care (teens, special needs, etc.)
Provide quarterly in-service trainings on
relevant topics
62
As directed by federal law, the NC Division of Social Services asks each North Carolina
county DSS agency to develop its own annual plan for complying with the Multiethnic
Placement Act of 1994 as amended by the Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996
(MEPA/IEP).
Although in the context of a busy agency this requirement may sometimes feel
unwelcome, it is actually a valuable opportunity. Your MEPA plan gives you all the data
you need and outlines what you will do during the course of the year. Don’t treat this as
an exercise in creative writing. Instead, develop and use a workable plan to
systematically enhance your resource family recruitment and retention efforts. Work
your MEPA plan!
For a MEPA plan template that can be customized for your agency, see Appendix J.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 15
North Carolina Division of Social Services
If agencies are serious about resource family recruitment and retention they must
develop a realistic plan and then adequately fund that plan. In some agencies, this will
mean giving those in the agency charged with resource family recruitment and retention
a definite budget.
Develop your own process or use the following table to estimate some of the costs
associated with the most common methods for finding and supporting resource
families.
R & R Method
Registration
or display
fee
Printing
costs for
informational
materials
(flyers,
brochures)
Printing
costs for
marketing
materials
(posters,
stickers,
pens)
Materials
for
children’s
activities
and/or
child-care
Give-aways
or
door
prizes
Advertising
in local
media
Food
and
paper
supplies
Community Fairs S1.00 S1.00 S1.00 S1.00 S1.00
General Community
Recruitment/Publicity S1.00 S1.00 S1.00
Community
Education/Public
Speaking
S1.00 S1.00
Annual Resource
Family Event S1.00 S1.00 S1.00 S1.00
Resource Family
Meetings/Trainings S1.00 S1.00 S1.00 S1.00
Total S1.00 S5.00 S3.00 S3.00 S2.00 S2.00 S2.00
In most agencies, the recruitment and retention budget will need to be supplemented by
community donations and partnerships. Be creative in thinking about how civic
organizations, businesses, churches, and individuals in your community might provide
important materials, services, or funding. Below are some possible ideas.
Even the smallest counties have numerous community groups with time, talents, and
money to dedicate to a worthy cause. Here are some groups that could potentially help
DSS agencies in North Carolina:
• Businesses and Business Groups: Chamber of Commerce, local business
associations (e.g., Realtor’s Association, Builder’s Association, etc.), large and
small retailers from Wal-Mart and Target down to your local main street shops
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 16
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Civic Groups: Lions Club, Ruritan Club, Kiwanis Club, fraternities and sororities
• Religious Organizations: Churches, synagogues, mosques, local clergy
associations, and interdenominational service groups
• Schools: PTAs, faculty associations, sports teams and booster clubs, individual
or group service projects
See Appendix K for a sample letter to community organizations and businesses to
invite their involvement in your agency’s efforts. While a letter is not enough by itself
to begin an active partnership, it’s an important first step.
Don’t Know Where to Start with
Fundraising in Your Community?
Why not start with your current resource
families and staff? Develop a list of the
churches, schools, and community groups where you have a
personal connection through a resource family or staff member.
Ask people to speak to their groups—or to introduce an agency
recruiter—to encourage them to partner with DSS.
Often we think of doing community outreach only to recruit resource parents. This
misses a large pool of people who might be able to help your recruitment and retention
mission immediately in some other way—and who might have an experience that leads
them to foster or adopt down the road.
As you plan your goals and activities for the year, think about specific ways
community groups might help. Collaborate with other units in your agency who might
benefit from community collaboration, such as foster care workers who need resources
for birth families. If you can help find a source for volunteer mentors for teens in care,
foster care or LINKS workers are more likely to help plan a training event with you on
fostering teens. You could involve a panel of LINKS youth in community presentations,
who could speak to the need for foster homes for teens and young adults on CARS
agreements. The group SAYSO (www.saysoinc.org) is another source of young people
accustomed to public speaking and willing and able to advocate for youth in care.
Some ideas might require collaboration within your agency on the use of volunteers.
DON’T GIVE UP! This can create a resource pool for everyone’s benefit. Volunteer Today
(http://www.volunteertoday.com/) is a helpful resource for information and suggestions
about using volunteers.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 17
North Carolina Division of Social Services
If Your Goal Is…
Community Groups Could
Help by. . .
Committee of x# of people will meet
monthly and will recruit 2 community
members in next 3 months
Providing a representative on your
recruitment and retention Committee
Conduct survey of foster parents and
gather profile data of youth and homes
in next 3 months
Providing an office volunteer to make copies
and mail out surveys
x# of additional licensed homes in 1
year
Encouraging members of their organization
to become resource families; writing an op-ed
piece for a local paper about your
agency’s specific needs; manning an agency
table at community events
x# of additional pre-service or in-service
classes in 1 year
Providing donations of snacks, paper goods,
child-care, etc.
See Chapter VII for more detailed ideas and resources for building and sustaining
community partnerships.
DSS agencies can receive grants from a wide range of funders, often without completing
lengthy applications. Here are some resources for finding grants:
• The Foundation Center (http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/)
Provides a comprehensive directory of grant providers by state; also provides
free and low-cost online training on finding and applying for grants.
• National Network of Adoption Advocacy Programs: One Church-One Child
(http://www.nnaap-ococ.org/minigrantmain.htm)
Provides mini-grants of $10,000 – $15,000 to child welfare agencies for new or
existing One Church - One Child programs (see Chapter VII for more
information). Also provides training and technical assistance on grant-writing.
Look for someone in your agency or
community who has experience with grant
writing to serve on your recruitment and
retention committee. Local nonprofit organizations and colleges
often have this expertise.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 18
North Carolina Division of Social Services
North Carolina’s Special Children Adoption Fund was created to find safe adoptive
homes for hard-to-place children who are living in or likely to
be placed in foster homes or institutions. The Fund is
intended to secure adoptive homes for more children than
would otherwise be possible within the limitations of existing
financial resources and to enhance the adoption services
program in this state. The Fund is performance-based:
payments are only made after a Decree of Adoption has been
issued.
Allowable uses of the fund include the direct provision or purchase by contract of
services included in the definitions of Adoption Services (code 010), Adoption
Recruitment (code 011), Adoption Case Management (code 012), Child-Specific
Recruitment, Assessment and Training of Adoptive Parents (code 013), and Post-
Adoption Case Management (code 016). Examples of allowable uses are:
• Recruitment and training of prospective adoptive families for individual foster
children or for foster children as a group
• Pre-placement assessments of prospective adoptive families, including
assessments by private adoption agencies in other states
• Preparing children for adoption (preparation support groups, life books, etc.);
• Legal or court-related services to expedite the adoption process
• Post-adoption services for adoptive families
• Adoption service staff to expedite the adoption process for foster children and
assure a timely response to all families who indicate an interest in adopting a
child in foster care
• Child-specific recruitment, assessment, and training of adoptive parents,
including relatives
• Cost-allocated share of equipment that will directly benefit the adoption program
(note that the standard rules of purchasing equipment and vehicles apply)
To learn more about the use of NC’s Special Children Adoption Fund, go to
Every little bit counts. If your agency has difficulty funding its resource family
recruitment and retention plan, consider fundraising. Have you ever thought of working
with your county foster parent association, a faith community, or a nonprofit
organization in your community to hold a bake sale or yard sale to support resource
family recruitment and retention efforts? In addition to raising funds, this can be a great
way to build community ownership of your program and your outcomes and to highlight
the good things your agency does for your community.
The Special Children
Adoption Fund can
be used to recruit
and train prospective
adoptive families.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 19
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Where should you spend the precious dollars you have at your disposal when it comes to
recruiting and retaining resource families?
The Annie E. Casey Foundation (2002) assessed the three main kinds of recruitment
and concluded that they’re all valuable, but they’re not equally valuable. Here are their
recommendations:
1. General Recruitment: events, Public Service Announcements (PSAs), billboards,
foster care/adoption fairs, booths and events.
• Least focused and least effective for bringing in likely resource parents
• Gets some unsuitable applicants
• Good for raising agency’s profile, broadening community awareness
• Spend 15% of your recruitment budget here
2. Child-Specific Recruitment: find a relative or close friend or canvas support groups,
especially for children with special needs (e.g., hearing impaired).
• Expensive. Should be 25% of recruitment budget
3. Targeted Recruitment: look at needs of the young people in your custody, then
look at the pool of available homes.
• Understand needs/traits of children (groups of youth entering care)
• Assess your community: look at data, look at successful foster families you
know
• If you pitch the message right, Wednesday’s Child can be targeted and
effective
• This should be 60% of your budget
Recruitment Approach Suggested Portion of Your R & R Budget
General 15%
Child-Specific 25%
Targeted 60%
Source: AECF, 2002
To learn more about general, targeted, and child-specific recruitment, consult Chapters
VIII, IX, and X of this guide.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 20
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Federal law and best practice dictate that agencies should diligently recruit potential
foster and adoptive families who reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of children for
whom homes are needed (P.L. 104-188).
When recruiting resource families for a targeted population, involve any agency staff
who are a part of that population and/or are trained to address racial/ethnic/cultural
barriers. Similarly, agencies should ask current foster, adoptive,
and kinship families to help them learn about and connect with
various cultures and groups in the community.
It is important to provide culturally appropriate materials,
food, and personal products and to decorate lobbies, offices,
booths at fairs, etc. with items which reflect the cultural
heritage of the various communities from which you want to
recruit resource families.
When families from diverse backgrounds express an
interest in becoming a resource family, allow for flexibility; recognize the challenges
different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups might face adjusting to rules and regulations
to which they are not accustomed. One of the ways to help people feel comfortable in a
new setting is to be aware of the language used.
Inclusive language is language which recognizes that:
• People’s experiences differ.
• Our shared language makes the experiences of dominant groups more visible
than those of oppressed groups.
• People are empowered by having a language with which to express their life
experiences.
• Language changes as cultural and social conditions change.
• Our language choices have the power to hurt and exclude others and to damage
or hinder relationships.
Culturally appropriate and non-gender-specific language should be used in professional
documentation and advertising and educational materials.
1. Choose inclusiveness over grammatical correctness or linguistic grace.
— With a little thought, these need not conflict.
2. Call people what they want to be called.
— Individual and group preferences can change over time. Keep up to date.
— If you’re not sure, ask.
— Words do have the power to hurt. They also have the power to convey
understanding and respect.
3. Take correction with grace. Your willingness to do so demonstrates partnership.
— DON’T SAY: “I didn’t mean anything by it” or “That’s just political
correctness.”
Use current resource
families to learn
about and connect
with various cultures
and groups in your
community.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 21
North Carolina Division of Social Services
􀂃􈍓 Such statements convey that you weren’t thinking about what you
were saying, didn’t care enough to think about how your words
would affect the other person, or that you think other
considerations are more important.
􀂃􈍏 Our language says more about what we think than we are usually
aware of, so choose language that reflects what you really mean.
— DO SAY: “Oops...sorry. I won’t say that again.”
􀂃􈍔 Then follow through. If you’re not sure why someone took
exception to something you said, ask.
Source: “Domestic Violence in Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, and Bisexual Communities,” A curriculum developed for: HIV Education and
Training Programs NYSDOH AIDS Institute, by NYS Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence July, 2001, cited in North
Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 2006
Although partnering with non-English speaking families can be a significant challenge
for monolingual child welfare staff, families should not be discouraged from becoming a
resource family because of this barrier. Being able to
communicate with a child in his own language as you take care
of him 24 hours a day is far more important than the ease with
which resource families communicate with professionals
serving the child.
Still, agencies have a responsibility to ask practical
questions about working with current and prospective resource
families who do not speak English, such as, who can conduct
pre-service and other training in this family’s language? Even if
agencies have documentation forms available in the family’s
language, that does not mean there is someone in the agency
that can read that language once the forms are filled out.
Professionals ask (and rightly so) what will happen once we get non-English speaking
families licensed—how will the family communicate with other professionals? Interact
with the schools? Administer medication? There are many possible obstacles.
If you face questions such as these, don’t be discouraged. Solutions can be found.
Indeed, the seed of many solutions may be found within resource families themselves—
often at least one adult in the household speaks some English, which allows
communication and facilitates problem solving.
That said, at present there is no single way to get answers to questions you may
have about licensing/approving and partnering with non-English speaking families. The
best approach is to reach out to other agencies to see if they have encountered and
overcome obstacles similar to the ones you face. The NC Division of Social Services
sponsors several e-mail listservs that can be used to query your peers at other agencies:
• MRS listserv. Subscribed to by county DSS child welfare practitioners,
supervisors, program managers, directors, university partners, Division staff,
and others. To join, send e-mail to MRS@lists.ncmail.net
• Child Welfare Supervisor listserv. Subscribed to by county DSS child welfare
supervisors, Division staff, university partners, and others. To join, send e-mail
to super-vision@resources.biglist.com.
The ease with which
resource families
communicate with a child
is far more important
than the ease with which
they communicate with
professionals serving the
child.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 22
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Certified MAPP/GPS Leaders listserv. Subscribed to by certified MAPP/GPS
leaders and Division training staff. To join, contact the NC Division of Social
Services’ Child Welfare Staff Development Unit (919/334-1172).
.
• Spanish-Speaking MAPP/GPS Leaders. The Division
maintains a list of certified MAPP/GPS leaders who speak
Spanish and are willing to contract with agencies to lead
Spanish-speaking MAPP/GPS groups. To obtain this
information, call the Division’s Child Welfare Staff
Development Unit (919/334-1172).
• Great Written Resource. A resource on working with Spanish-speaking
resource families is Nuestra Familia, Nuestra Cultura: Promoting & Supporting
Latino Families in Adoption and Foster Care (AdoptUsKids, 2008). Go to
Children in resource families should not be used as interpreters. Asking a child to
interpret for his parents can disrupt the family hierarchy—it gives the child the
opportunity to change the meaning of what’s being said and/or it may expose the child
to information he is not developmentally ready to hear. Instead, use an adult interpreter.
Finding an Interpreter. Many social services agencies contract with people from the
community to help interpret exchanges with non-English speaking families. If your
agency does not, or if you need to communicate in a language in which your regular
interpreters are not fluent, consider contacting the language department of a nearby
college or university or your local hospital; these can be excellent resources for locating
free or low-cost interpreters. Faith communities (churches, mosques, temples) that serve
native speakers of a language may also have people willing to volunteer time as an
interpreter. Finally, reach out to organizations that provide ESL (English as a Second
Language) classes in your county for recommendations. Once you identify one person
who is bilingual, he or she can help you find other potential interpreters in the
community.
If You Cannot Find an Interpreter. If no interpreter is available, some guidelines for
communicating include the following:
• Speak slowly in a calm, moderate voice.
• Address a person using his or her complete name or last name. Use a formal
style, especially if you are not familiar the person.
• Use any word(s) you know in the person’s language and act out words and
actions while verbalizing them.
• Discuss one topic at a time; give instructions in sequence.
• Avoid asking questions or making statements in the negative.
• Avoid using pronouns.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 23
North Carolina Division of Social Services
If there are still difficulties communicating, you may wish to try communicating in
writing or through a third language (i.e., you may not speak Russian and the Russian
parent may not speak English, but you both may speak some French).
Translating Written Materials. Web sites such as
can translate blocks of text into many languages
from English and vice versa at no cost. However, it is a good idea to limit your use of
this resource—use a qualified translator to ensure your materials say what you intend
them to say.
Source: North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 2006
Because most child welfare professionals have not worked with deaf or hard of hearing
resource families, they may anticipate difficulties in partnering with them. However, deaf
and hard of hearing families should not be discouraged from becoming resource
families. Indeed, because of their experiences and knowledge of community services
and resources, they can provide excellent care—especially to children who are
themselves deaf or hard of hearing. Following are some guidelines for working with
resource families who are deaf or hard of hearing.
• Do not use children to interpret. Instead, use interpreters. The interpreter and
speaker should be positioned beside one another so the resource family member
can see both persons easily.
• If the resource family is speech reading, ensure proper lighting so he or she can
see the speaker’s mouth easily. The speaker should face the speech reader and
be positioned at the speech reader’s eye level. The speaker should talk slowly yet
naturally.
• Consider videoconferencing to provide services for clients with hearing
impairments.
• Consider needs of clients with hearing impairments when purchasing alarm
systems, alarm clocks, phone systems, televisions and other equipment that is
typically utilized through hearing.
TTY Devices. A text telephone device (TTY) is a keyboard and text display device
that can be connected to a telephone and is used by persons who are deaf, hard of
hearing, or who have speech impairments. Some social services agencies have a TTY
with a dedicated phone line. TTY equipment should be tested regularly and all staff
should be trained on its use and appropriate terminology. If the organization does not
have TTY it may communicate with TTY users via the NC Relay. The NC Relay system
allows an operator to translate for persons who are deaf or hard of hearing for people
who do not have a TTY system on their end. There is also TTY compatible software and
hardware for personal computers. Additionally, TTY might be set up as an answering
machine to retrieve text teletype messages. If your agency receives TTY calls on a voice
line, these are typically identified by a high pitched electronic beeping sound, by an
announcer, or by silence at the other end. If an organization uses portable TTY units, it
is suggested that these are located near the phone in order to reduce delays.
NC Relay is a service which can connect a TTY caller with a hearing caller. Access NC
Relay by dialing 711 or 877-735-8200.
Source: North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 2006
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 24
North Carolina Division of Social Services
When working with American Indian resource families it is important to learn about their
tribe and its traditions and history. Child welfare professionals should have a good
understanding of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and resources available within the
tribe. They must also demonstrate a strong respect for the tribe’s cultural integrity.
Resources for working with American Indian resource families include the following:
• Working with American Indian Families, Children’s Services Practice Notes, vol.
11, no. 2
• Indian Child Welfare Issues [Resource Page], National Resource Center for
Foster Care and Permanency Planning
American Indians often find it challenging to become resource families for the following
reasons:
1. A value of non-interference in some tribes inhibits people from offering themselves
to assist in someone else’s business or problem.
2. It is likely that potential foster families may have experienced foster care themselves
or had relatives who were in care: before 1978 as many as one out of every four
Indian children were in some form of out-of-home care. Many Indian people do not
want to expose their family to what they experienced.
3. Native Americans may not trust the child welfare system and what it represents.
They also may have concerns how their family might be judged.
4. Many people have such a negative view of the child welfare system that they simply
do not want to become part of the program that removes children.
Try using a door-to-door home-finding approach. In this approach, a resource family
recruiter begins by going to respected elders and to community and spiritual leaders.
The leaders are informed about the need for resource families and are asked to
recommend families that would be good at taking care of children. Once a few names
are gathered, the worker starts the process of visiting each recommended person’s
home. During the visit, the worker asks if she/he can tell them about the child welfare
system and about the need for resource families, but the worker does not usually ask
about their interest in actually providing foster care at this time. The worker may say
“People around here say that you care about your kids. Do you know anyone who you
think would also be good at taking care of kids?” The worker may come back several
times before asking the family to consider becoming a resource family. This approach is
considered polite and respectful.
Additionally, a worker might wait until a particular child needs a home and make a
request in the context of that child’s need. It is helpful if the worker is part of and
knows the community. This must be done in a respectful way by a worker willing to take
the time to develop relationships with the community members and tribal leaders.
From Terry Cross (1995) Heritage and Helping: A Model Curriculum for Indian Child Welfare Practice. National Indian Child Welfare
Association. Reprinted from Answering the Call: Getting More for Children from Your Recruitment Efforts, Practitioner’s Guide (n.d.)
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 25
North Carolina Division of Social Services
“Both of us are Lumbee, so we had a relationship starting out. We went to [tribal] board
meetings to talk to them. Their concern is Native American children being placed with non-
Native American families. But we explained to them our numbers, that Native American
children far outweigh the number of Native American foster families. And that most
recruitment comes from word of mouth, through churches, etc.
“We also adjusted our criteria. It used to be that you had to turn in an application before
going to MAPP/GPS class. But we lost some people who didn't get their application in. Now, if
someone calls and we have a MAPP/GPS class starting the next week, you're welcome to
come. Just get us the application before the end of MAPP/GPS. We had five or six Native
American families come to our last MAPP/GPS class.”
— Anthony Maynor & Debra Bailey, Robeson County DSS
Stay in touch with demographic trends in the communities you serve. To find and
prepare resource families who can meet the needs of the children in foster care, it is
important to be able to answer the following types of questions about the children’s
racial, ethnic, or cultural groups.
• What are the roles of men and women in this culture? What is the role of
children, elders and extended family members?
• What is the communication style of this culture? How does one show respect?
• How are children disciplined?
• What is the role of religion or spirituality in this community?
You can educate yourself through formal training, your own research and, most of all,
by learning directly from someone who belongs to the group in question.
True partnership with prospective and current resource families depends on one-on-one
relationships and building trust. Some guidelines for relationship building with people
who are different from you include the following.
• Be flexible about time; different cultures view time differently
• Correct pronunciation shows respect: learn to pronounce each person’s name
• Do not be offended if a client speaks to another person in their language
• Adjust your communication style as much as possible to the person’s style in
regards to tone, pauses, pace of speech, gestures, eye contact, personal space,
and touching
• Understand the person’s interpretation of their culture; it is critical to recognize
that everyone has his or her own personal belief system
Source: North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 2006
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 26
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Recruiting families of color can pose a particular
challenge when there is mistrust between
agencies and communities (Casey Family
Programs, 2005). The frequency with which
children are placed with families of a different
ethnicity can contribute to this sense of mistrust. In North Carolina, the
high incidence of Lumbee children placed in non-Lumbee foster homes has
caused concern (Jenkins, 2007), while the state’s growing Latino
population suggests a similar trend may develop if Latino foster families
are not added to recruitment efforts.
Casey Family Programs’ Breakthrough Series Collaborative (2005) has
generated numerous interventions in this area. Agencies in other states
have successfully undertaken recruitment campaigns among communities
of color with similar interventions (Utah Foster Care Foundation, cited in
ACF, 2001; Contra Costa, CA, “Kids Like Maria” campaign).
Recommendations include:
a. Translating materials into Spanish or other languages of minority
communities, including recruitment brochures, applications, flyers
for schools, posters in community spaces, etc.
b. Certifying foster families of color as co-trainers of MAPP/GPS
c. Conducting joint recruitment efforts by families of color at fairs
and other community events
d. Making joint contact (agency staff and foster parents of color) with
prospective foster families
e. Having existing foster families of color contact prospective
families who have dropped out or slowed in their momentum
towards licensing
f. Conducting informational meetings in other languages and/or with
other foster parents of color
g. Creating a recruitment video for specific groups of color
h. Implementing a dedicated line for foster family inquiries with a
recording in multiple languages
i. Building relationships and focusing recruitment efforts in faith,
ethnic, and civic organizations in communities of color
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 27
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Many people think about fostering for a year or more and hear messages about foster
care three or four times before making an initial inquiry call (Pasztor & Wynne 1995).
When people finally reach out to make that first call, your response needs to be
warm, timely, and encouraging (AdoptUsKids, n.d.). From the beginning, each potential
foster or adoptive family should be considered a precious resource, deserving personal
attention and efficient service.
Remember, we need them much more than they need us.
Often potential resource families drop out of the licensing process because it drags on
for too long, or because they feel forgotten or unsupported. One study found that out of
2,698 inquiries from prospective foster families, only 8% (n=227) resulted in new
licensed/approved foster homes for the child welfare system (Wildfire, 2008).
The Annie E. Casey Foundation suggests that agencies can get more people
successfully through to placement by making the process more efficient. They found
that typically a lot of time is wasted between licensing steps:
The First Call Orientation
Training Application
Assessment Approval
Orientation Pre-service Training
Application Assessment
Approval Placement
Consider the following questions to enhance your response to potential resource
families:
• When do gaps occur between the first call and placement of a child in a foster
home?
• Which steps take the most time?
• Where do you lose the most people?
• What are you doing or can you start doing to keep people engaged?
• What are you doing or can you do to speed up the process?
Source: AECF, 2002
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 28
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Waiting Too Long
Some agencies wait until families complete all or part of MAPP/GPS training before
meeting with them individually, starting the application process, submitting background
checks, or doing a home visit. While this strategy may seem to help you focus your time
on families who are “serious” about fostering, it may instead mean that people who
could be serious become frustrated with the long wait and give up. The sooner people
can make a personal connection with someone at your agency, the more likely they are
to commit to the process. If instead they have to wait through a drawn out process
before being personally engaged, they are more likely to quit before they really get
started.
Being Too Hasty
Some agencies are too quick to screen individuals out of consideration if they do not
meet certain requirements. Although some shortcomings cannot be remedied (e.g., a
serious criminal history), others can. For example, someone may be perfectly willing to
get her GED if it means being able to care for children who need it.
The Personal Touch
It’s crucial to have standards for quick, personal responses to new callers. People who
make a personal connection to an agency are much more likely to stay the course. At
least one large public agency in North Carolina adopted a policy of visiting families
within one week of that first phone call from a prospective resource family. While
workers at first thought this would be too time consuming, it became part of a very
successful recruitment and retention approach.
At a minimum, interested callers should receive a follow-up phone call within a few
days to answer additional questions and be sure they received their information packet
and orientation session date.
Another worker made a point of personally calling all interested families before the
orientation session to give them her name again and let them know she would be at the
welcome table at the orientation. Especially for single parents, having a person to look
for—and who is looking out for them—can make all the difference.
Don’t have enough staff to do home visits to all new
callers? This can be a great role for experienced resource families. Or you
can ask new callers if they would like a phone call from a current resource
family to answer more of their questions.
Worried about what your current resource families might say? Think
again. It’s better for families to know the real story from the beginning,
and to know your agency’s going to be straight with them.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 29
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Tracking What Works
Collect information to help you assess which recruitment efforts are most effective. Be
sure you ask “what made you decide to call today?” or “how did you hear about us?”
every time someone new calls. See Appendix E for a sample intake form for new callers
and Appendix F for a sample spreadsheet to track responses.
Other Ideas from AdoptUsKids for Engaging New Callers
• Have a special recruitment 800 number and a real person answering the phone;
have access to a translator for return call.
• Prepare the person who answers the phone to answer most questions. Don’t
bounce the caller around from person to person.
• Make sure your orientation of prospective parents makes them feel welcomed,
respected, accepted, and needed.
• Teach all who come into contact with resource parents how to handle the first call.
In training, emphasize the best way to respond to cultural differences.
• Provide persons who have first contact and/or take first calls with talking points
rather than a script and with answers to commonly asked question. See a sample of
talking points in Appendix L.
• Provide new callers with information on the children who need homes:
— Age and various racial ethnic backgrounds
— Emotional needs of children
• Provide new callers with information on the pre-service training process.
• Send notes and meeting reminders at least a week before the first orientation or
training session.
• Put the parents on a mailing list for newsletters.
• Periodically audit the agency’s first contact approach:
— Use a “secret shopper” method in which agency staff call in to personally
experience the quality of response.
— Auditors: use a checklist to rate the experience and give consistent feedback.
— Ask: Do we encourage callers to bring friends to orientation?
Source: AdoptUsKids, n.d..
Everyone who recruits and licenses resource families must
answer a fundamental question. When you begin a mutual
assessment, is your underlying belief that you need to screen
out inappropriate families, uncovering secrets or
misconceptions that might make you reluctant to place a
child in their home? Or is your underlying belief that you need
to screen in families who show potential and interest by determining what support,
training, or resources they would need to successfully care for a child?
Our underlying attitudes and unspoken priorities have a big influence on how we do
our job and relate to people.
Of course our first priority is to find safe, stable placements for children in care. But
no family or home is perfect. How do you decide which risks you can live with and which
you can’t? How do you decide which families you can develop and train, and which are
not worth the effort?
Our underlying attitudes
have a big influence on
how we do our job and
relate to people.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 30
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Many families in North Carolina have been denied placements by one agency only to
go on to successfully foster or adopt children from other agencies or even other states.
Agencies who successfully place children—especially those considered “hard to place”—
work collaboratively and creatively in partnership with families to address their needs
and build on their strengths.
We talk about being strengths-based all the time. Sometimes the reality is that we
don’t look very hard for strengths, and we are quick to rule out families based on
superficial needs.
For many of us, the ideal family looks a lot like our own. Of course, this kind of bias—
often unconscious and unintentional—occurs in all professions and types of people. We
tend to feel most comfortable with people who are most like us (Greenwald & Banaji,
1995; Phelps, et al., 2000). However, when making life-altering decisions about finding
homes for children, this kind of bias needs to be brought into the light and challenged.
In North Carolina, some families who wish to foster or adopt may be so different
from the social worker that it is hard to see their strengths. A family with limited formal
education may seem lacking to a social worker from a middle class, college-educated
background. A non-traditional family may seem inappropriate to a worker from a very
traditional family. But are these really the characteristics that make for good families?
The relative wealth of a family can also be a big influence. True, we need resource
families who can support themselves without an over-reliance on the small
reimbursement provided for taking care of children from the child welfare system. Yet
often there is a values-based decision about what is needed for a child to live happily
with a family.
It’s not that finances or beliefs shouldn’t play a part in the mutual home assessment;
it’s just that we need to recognize our own biases about money, social class, and
lifestyle. A family may not be just right for you personally, but they may be just right for
a child in need of a home.
Some child welfare professionals are “put off” when one of the
first questions a prospective resource family asks has to do
with financial compensation. Although social workers may feel
concerned—families’ primary reason for wanting to foster should not be money (or they
will be sorely disappointed!)—this is a good example of a time when it is important to
keep one’s biases in check. Given that many people deliberate a long time before
calling the agency, it is possible that they may have answered many of their other
questions (e.g., is their house large enough, how long is pre-service training, etc.). It
may be that financial questions are among the few they have not yet answered.
The point? Even if someone’s first question is about money, don’t assume they are
just “in it for the money.” Remember the principle of partnership that says, “Judgments
can wait.”
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 31
North Carolina Division of Social Services
This chapter is based in large part on the NC Coalition Against Domestic Violence’s Best Practices
Manual (2006): special thanks for granting us permission to reprint and adapt this material.
Community education and public awareness efforts are essential to recruiting and
retaining resource families—they increase the public’s awareness of the need for
resource families, create support for child welfare programs, and help us tap into
existing community strengths and resources.
Every resource family recruitment and retention program should have a community
education and public awareness plan. The plan should be simple yet creative, appeal to
specific audiences and be culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate. Essential
components of the plan include the goals and target audiences, messages, channels,
timeline, and budget. Plans should incorporate as many types of educational activities as
possible, including speaking engagements, development and distribution of materials,
and media campaigns. The plan should begin with thorough research and end with an
evaluation to measure success.
• Year-round campaigns are considered more effective than periodic
campaigns.
• Many people think about fostering for a
year or more and hear messages about
foster care 3 or 4 times before making an
initial inquiry call.
• The more frequently people are exposed to positive messages,
the more likely they are to call.
Source: Pasztor & Wynne, 1995
The primary focus of most community education and public awareness efforts will be on
encouraging people to consider stepping forward to explore becoming a resource
parent. Education efforts should also inform potential volunteers and other community
stakeholders (e.g., churches, civic clubs, etc.) about what they can do to support the
good work of your agency. Messages for education campaigns should be carefully
designed based on the needs of your agency and the needs of the children and families
you serve. Chapters VIII, IX, and X of this guide provide more information about the
audiences for general, targeted, and child-specific recruitment efforts.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 32
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Child welfare agencies can enhance recruitment of resource families by participating in
or sponsoring community education events. These events help build community
awareness and advertise the mission and services of the organization. Community
education events may also serve as fundraisers. (See Chapter III for more on
fundraising.) Often agencies partner with other community organizations in outreach
efforts, which increases the reach of their message and enhances interagency
collaboration. Common community education events include the following:
• Bills with foster care/adoption inserts
• Book club focus on foster care/adoption themes
• Candlelight vigils to promote awareness of child abuse
• Celebration around anniversaries, facility expansions, or high profile visitors
• Celebration of appreciation to community partners
• Community picnic or potluck
• Interfaith gathering
• Child welfare issue forums
• Marches
• Newspaper pledge in support of foster and adoptive parents signed by members
of community
• Participation in national campaigns, including Foster Care Month in May and
Adoption Awareness Month in November
• Faith organization-sponsored prayer or meditation services
• Proclamation signing ceremony
• Shopping bags or other containers with resource family recruitment messages
• Panels of former/current youth in foster care and/or resource families
Managing a Speakers Bureau
Resource families and former foster youth can be very effective speakers, especially if
they tell their own story. Some child welfare agencies run a speaker’s bureau that
includes people trained and prepared to speak about the need for resource families,
child welfare issues, and the organization. Speaker’s bureaus should
offer presentations in all languages spoken in the community.
Typically, the organization maintains records on speakers including
the following information:
• Name
• Mailing and e-mail addresses
• Telephone numbers (including mobile phone numbers)
• Scheduling preferences (day, night, week, weekend)
• Group preferences such as civic groups, youth, businesses, faith organizations,
or other specific populations
• Geographic preferences
• Speaker’s status as a resource parent or former foster child who will talk about
personal experience, if applicable
Resource families
and former foster
youth can be very
effective speakers.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 33
North Carolina Division of Social Services
A designated staff person or volunteer usually coordinates speaking engagements. They
will contact the speaker who is the best match based on the information above and keep
records of all speaking engagements.
SAYSO, which is North Carolina’s organization of current and former foster youth,
has members who have had experience making presentations that include “telling their
story.” Your county may have a local chapter of SAYSO, or you can contact them through
their website at www.saysoinc.org.
Speaker’s Bureau Records
It is important for organizations to keep records of all speaking engagements and to
evaluate the speakers. Following the speaking engagement, an evaluation and thank you
note should be sent or given to the group that requested the speaking engagement.
Other speaker’s bureau documentation may include the following information:
• Audience
• Contact person
• Mailing address
• Phone number and e-mail address
• Number of people in audience
• Volunteer time donated by speaker
• Date sent evaluation and thank you note to the group
• Date added group to mailing list, if requested
There are a variety of ways that your agency can educate the community through written
materials. These materials may be created in-house with the help of desktop publishing
software, contracted out to professional publishers, adapted with permission from a
neighboring county or partner agency, or obtained from national or regional campaigns.
To obtain posters, PSAs, and other promotional materials developed by the Ad Council
in cooperation with AdoptUsKids and the US Department of Health and Human Services,
go to http://www.adcouncil.org or http://www.adoptuskids.org.
When creating or reviewing drafts of printed materials it is important to consider the
following types of visual elements to make the materials more appealing to readers:
• Boxes, borders, backgrounds
• Capital letters, bold, italics, underlining
• Colors
• Graphics
• Headings, subheadings and captions
• Justification
• Photos that reflect diversity
• Sidebars and white space
• Spacing
• Typefaces
The agency’s logo should be placed on all printed education materials.
The following types of printed materials are commonly created and distributed by
resource family recruitment programs.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 34
North Carolina Division of Social Services
Brochures
The brochure should be written from the public’s point of view and be concise, action-oriented,
and focused on success and the future. Brochures might contain the following
information:
• Mission
• Statement describing the need, including basic information about the
characteristics of the children and families served
• Information about who is eligible and the process needed to become a foster or
adoptive parent
• Description of what the organization needs to fulfill its mission
• Description of how the reader may help
• Contact information
Matt Davies, a board member of the NC Foster and Adoptive Parent
Association, recommends that agencies
provide business cards to foster and adoptive
parents, who can then give them out to people
interested in learning more about becoming a
resource parent.
Fact Sheets
A fact sheet is a one-page document that offers statistics relating to foster care,
adoption, other child welfare issues, and information about services provided by the
organization. Information for fact sheets can be found at the Child Welfare Information
Gateway (http://www.childwelfare.gov/), the NC Division of Social Services website
(http://www.dhhs.state.nc.us/dss/), and the site “NC Child Welfare Program”
(http://ssw.unc.edu/cw/).
Newsletters
Organizations may publish a single newsletter or separate newsletters for the
volunteers, staff, and community. See Appendix M for a sample newsletter for resource
families from Nash County DSS. It is also important to contribute articles about foster
care and adoption to other organizations’ newsletters. Newsletters should look
professional and usually contain the following types of information:
• Mission statement
• Local and national information relating to foster care and adoption
• Program highlights and information about services offered
• Updates on adoption and foster care related statistics
• Recent and current events and projects
• Calendar of upcoming events
• Resource family, volunteer, or staff profiles
• Legislative information
• Information about partnerships with other organizations
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 35
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Organizational and individual honors received
• Hours of clothes closet, etc. (if applicable)
• Needs list
• New resources such as library materials
• Position announcements
• Contact information including the organization’s name, mailing address, editor’s
name, phone number and e-mail address
• Statement requesting address corrections and notification if receiving multiple
copies as well as a request for readers to contribute names and addresses for the
mailing list
Promotional Items and Advertisements
Promotional items might include posters, bookmarks, stickers, bumper stickers, pencils,
pens, T-shirts, mugs or other items with the agency’s logo and/or recruitment theme.
Additionally agencies may advertise on billboards, the inside and outside of buses, and
other locations.
Distribution of Printed Materials
Printed materials may be distributed in person, by mail, or electronically. An important
part of the program’s annual community education and public awareness plan is where
and how your materials will get distributed. Having this information discussed during
the planning process will be helpful when decisions need to get made about how much
material to have printed. It can also be helpful to discuss the production and
distribution of materials to coincide with large speaking engagements or display events
(such as community events, health fairs, etc.).
Personal Distribution
Written materials may be distributed through brochure stands at the agency, by handing
out at speaking engagements, and by posting at other organizations and businesses.
Some popular places to distribute information include the following:
• Apartment bulletin boards
• Businesses
• Doctors office waiting and exam rooms
• Grocery stores
• Information tables and booths at community fairs
• Laundry mats
• Post offices
• Public buildings
• Schools and libraries
Distribution by Mail
Printed materials may also be distributed by mail. Your community education plan
should address mailing expenses and guide staff in decisions about mass mailings. It is
important for mailing lists to be accurate, coded, and maintained on a database with
names, titles, addresses, phone and fax numbers, e-mail addresses, and notes about
previous contacts or conversations.
Electronic Distribution
All printed materials may also be distributed electronically through e-mail or web sites.
It is important for recruitment and retention staff to work carefully with electronic
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 36
North Carolina Division of Social Services
communications experts to ensure appropriate distribution. A quick way to distribute
materials for public use is to format your documents as pdf files, through Adobe
Acrobat. Storing files in Adobe Acrobat pdf format and keeping the original Microsoft
Word document (doc) in a safe place ensures that the document cannot be edited
unintentionally. Similarly, when distributing fliers or other announcements electronically,
attaching them as pdf files instead of doc files ensures that they cannot be modified by
the receiver.
To download a free copy of Adobe Acrobat
Reader, with which you can read pdf files,
visit:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/r
eadstep2.html. Install this application once you download it.
There are two free software programs you can download to
create pdf files:
• For PrimoPDF, visit: www.primopdf.com
• For Cute PDF Writer, visit:
http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/Writer.asp
After you have downloaded the software, to convert a Microsoft
Word document to pdf format, follow these steps:
1. Go to File menu
2. Choose Print
3. Next to “Printer Name,” click arrow so drop
down menu appears
4. Choose Adobe pdf1
It is important for resource family recruiters to understand the staffing of media
organizations and to keep current lists of media contacts. See Appendix N for a sample
format. The following positions are common contacts:
Television
• News directors
• Producers
• Editors
• Anchors
• Reporters
Radio
• Talk or Public Affairs directors
• Producers
1 This only works AFTER you have installed PDF software.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 37
North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Hosts
• Reporters
• Bookers
Typically the structure at print media organizations includes editors and reporters who
write for newspapers, magazines, or web sites in the following topic areas:
• National events
• City or metro events
• Editorials
• Features
• Special topics such as child welfare issues
When planning media efforts, it is important to be aware that local stories may be
picked up by wire services and printed in state or national media outlets. Media pieces
may take on a variety of formats, several of which are outlined below.
Editorials
Editorials highlight a specific current issue, are usually 700 words or less and are written
in the format of a memorandum. Prior to creating an editorial, it is helpful to contact the
newspaper to inquire about any preferred formats or methods of submission. When
writing an editorial, it is important to express passion about the issue and use local, real
life examples. It is also helpful to include information about relevant laws or policies,
services and volunteer or donor opportunities in the local area. A strong editorial will
end with a call to action. Information about the author, such as his or her background
and affiliations, should accompany the editorial. A sample editorial from Guilford County
DSS can be found in Appendix O.
Feature Articles
A feature is a non-news piece of general interest to the public. Features often tell
someone’s story. DSS agencies have countless stories to tell that can educate and
motivate the public. Feature story ideas include:
• Volunteer opportunities for helping birth families and children in care
(donations, mentoring, providing respite care, becoming resource parents, etc.)
• A family who has fostered for many years or fostered or adopted a large number
of children
• A youth who found a family during his or her teen years
• The profile of a single foster mom
• A successful reunification that highlights shared parenting
• A family that has fostered more than one generation
• Available subsidies and supports for adopted children
Source: NACAC, 2001
See Appendix P for a sample feature story that celebrates a successful foster family
while also providing local statistics to highlight an agency’s needs.
Media Advisories or Alerts
A media advisory or alert serves as a reminder that an event is approaching. It should be
brief, with a headline, contact information, date, and details including the purpose, time,
and place of the event. It is also helpful to include an offer to set up interviews and
photo opportunities with key individuals.
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North Carolina Division of Social Services
Media Packets (Press Packets)
Media packets are distributed to media representatives who attend an event sponsored
by the organization. Staff generally meet with media representatives before the event
begins to discuss materials in the packet. Information that might be part of a media
packet includes the following items:
• Copy of press release
• Biographies of presenters and contact information
• Brief talking points
• Statistics related to foster care, adoption, or child welfare (fact sheet)
• Story ideas
• Brochure
• Recent news clippings
• Photos that are labeled with a caption and names of persons in the photo (with
their permission); black and white 5x7 photos are usually preferred
Press or Photo Opportunities
A press or photo opportunity is an event that is not planned specifically for the
media but might be covered by the media. Examples include fundraisers,
rallies, and other community events. It is important to be prepared for these
opportunities and plan who will address the media and what points will be
presented if the opportunity arises.
Press Releases
A press release highlights an upcoming event. Press releases are usually distributed the
day before the event and are addressed to a specific person. A press release should
describe who, what, why, when, where, and how in regards to the event being
publicized.
Press releases are typewritten on letterhead and double-spaced with a wide left
margin for editorial notes. These documents are typically 1 to 2 pages in length and
one-sided rather than printed front and back. If the press release is two pages, write
“Add one” on top of second page. If possible, provide suggestions for video or audio
footage to accompany the story. Appendix Q contains instructions for writing a press
release for a special event.
Public Service Announcements
Public service announcements (PSAs) typically offer information about the need for
foster or adoptive parents or special events. The PSA should be clear, concise, and
informational as well as emotional and answer who, what, why, when, where, and how.
A PSA is usually written by community education staff and forwarded to the
broadcaster along with a cover letter. The media type, date, description, length, and
contact information should appear on the top of the page and the PSA text should be
typed in uppercase letters. Standard spots are typically 10 seconds, 20 seconds, or 60
seconds. Each block of 10 seconds will equal approximately 20-25 words. Several
versions of different lengths might be created to accommodate different media spots.
Many organizations secure a local personality to donate their time as a reader or submit
pre-taped PSAs.
Treat Them Like Gold: A Best Practice Guide to Partnering with Resource Families 39
North Carolina Division of Social Services
In partnership with AdoptUsKids, the Ad
Council has developed free, high quality
PSAs about adopting children from foster
care. Available in English and Spanish, they
direct viewers to the national AdoptUsKids hotline, which
routes callers to NC Kids for support, follow-up, and referral to
the appropriate county DSS. You can register for free with the
Ad Council and then view and download all of their PSAs at
http://psacentral.adcouncil.org/psacentral/signon.do.
The following excerpts, taken from interviews conducted by the Rural Success Project
(UNC, 2005), reflect the experiences, concerns, and advice of editors, reporters, and
rural child welfare agency directors.
The Media: Newspaper Editors and Reporters
“I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a press release [from our local DSS
agency]. They are good about responding to questions but don’t
initiate stories that might help the community.”
“We’re looking for stories that contain news and information which
can help our readers. If we’ve informed people to help them relieve
the stress of a crisis, then I feel like I’ve done my job. That is my
mission—to help people.”
“An overall discussion of the ground rules would be very helpful—especially when the
relationship is just beginning or changing with a new reporter or director. Both sides are
a little more cooperative when there is not a grenade already sitting on the table.”
“The director at the DSS here is informative and cooperative if I take the first step. If I
don’t approach the agency, I don’t get the information. It would be great if there was
someone who would keep in close contact with me to keep me informed.”
“If you want a good news story covered, you’re going to have to think of a bad news
angle. When writing a press release, talk about the problem and how the agency is
dealing with that problem.”
Rural Child Welfare Agency Directors
“I’ve learned that I have to make the news, I have to frame the picture, I have to shape
the story. Otherwise, the only information that would get out about DSS would be the
ugly stuff.”
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North Carolina Division of Social Services
“You have to build a relationship with the media when there is not a crisis. Then when
something does happen—and it will happen—you have a better chance of getting your
side of the story out.”
“If the only time you communicate with the media is when there is a crisis, you will be
seen as a crisis agency. There’s an old saying – if you don’t create your image, one will
be created for you.”
Source: UNC, 2005
When a Reporter Calls
All agency employees should receive basic training on taking media
calls and directing these calls to designated staff members. Below are
suggestions for staff who respond to media contacts.
• Be available and respond quickly since reporters are often under tight time
frames.
• Determine the reporter’s name and the media source that they represent and
their contact information. You might offer to call back the reporter in order to
verify the legitimacy of the caller.
• If you need extra time or want to gain more control over the interview, get a list
of the reporter’s questions and say you will call back. Be sure to give a time that
you intend to call back and check with the reporter to make sure that the timing
will still allow them to make their deadline.
• Determine the reporter’s agenda including the story angle and know their
deadlines so you can assist in a timely manner.
• It is critical to maintain confidentiality when working with the media. Ask media
representatives to sign a confidentiality agreement before allowing them to visit
your agency.
• If you are not available for the interview or do not want to be interviewed it is
helpful to refer the reporter to another expert.
• If possible, meet with the reporter before the interview to discuss the story
angle, who else is being interviewed, and the length of the interview.
• Know the demographics of your audience and use this knowledge to plan the
most effective way to address them.
Tips for Interviews
During an interview it is important to convey a confident and helpful attitude and stay
focused on the message. Below are additional tips for participating in an interview.
• Inquire about when the interview will air or be published. The best time slots for
radio and television are typically the hours immediately before and after the work
day. Also ask if the interviewer has prepared questions or if there will be
questions from an audience.
• Review the program or other interviews by the same reporter before being
interviewed.
• Conduct role plays before the interview. Practice with people who can offer
support and constructive feedback.
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• For television interviews, wear simple clothes and jewelry (solid colors are best)
and pay attention to your posture.
• To reduce the likelihood of being misquoted by print
media, you might provide a written statement
summarizing your main points.
• For radio interviews, pay special attention to verbal
punctuation—pace your speech and use pauses. This
will help the audience to remember what they hear.
• Keep a glass of water nearby.
• Know the main message you want to convey and repeat
it several times.
• Use everyday language rather than jargon or abbreviations.
• Remember what you say represents the organization and may be quoted—never
say anything you do not want repeated and remember that you are never really
“off the record.”
• Keep responses short and to the point. Answers should be about 30 to 45
seconds in length. Tie your responses back to main points.
• Give real life examples of the points you make while maintaining confidentiality.
• Be prepared to offer your thoughts and analysis and state clearly what is fact and
what is opinion.
• Use numbers rather than percentages, such as “one in four” rather than 25%.
• Do not introduce a topic you feel uncomfortable addressing.
• Never speak negatively about other organizations or individuals.
• If a reporter states incorrect information, restate the information correctly.
• If asked a question about a third party it is usually best to answer that you do
not wish to speculate.
• If asked a question with specific choices, remember that your answer is not
limited to those choices and offer a broader perspective if necessary.
• Never repeat a negative statement. Instead, replace it in your answer with a
positive point.
• After you get the point across, stop talking. Don’t ramble.
Maintaining Positive Media Relationships
Build ongoing relationships with the media and continuously thank them for their
support because they are an important partner in child welfare. Below are ideas for
creating and enhancing these relationships.
• Ensure the media is on your general mailing lists and invite them to attend
activities sponsored by the organization.
• Keep updated lists of media contacts. These lists may be obtained from press
associations.
• Ensure the media knows your organization’s contact persons and keep them
updated regarding any staff changes.
• Know the reporters in your area and their reputations.
• Inform yourself about local and national events and be prepared to present a
statement or grant an interview when a high profile child welfare incident occurs.
• Provide relevant data from your agency to educate and motivate readers.
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North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Maintain a list of ideas for human interest stories involving the organization and
encourage the media to contact you when they are in need of a story.
• Maintain a list of resource families and/or foster care alumni who are available to
speak to the media.
• In case of a severe misquote or misprint, request a retraction or file a complaint
with the media source.
• Encourage the media to assist the organization by sponsoring education campaigns.
• Invite media representatives to participate in volunteer training or other
conferences or workshops.
• Encourage the media to spotlight foster care and adoption issues regularly rather
than only covering the sensational cases.
Preparing for a Media-Covered Crisis
Usually the media will be on your doorstep as soon as a crisis or problem occurs. Below
are some tips to help you prepare for a crisis before it happens.
• Written crisis procedures should designate persons responsible for investigating
and managing a crisis and describe who is authorized to serve as the
organization’s spokesperson.
• Recognize when a minor problem may turn into a crisis and plan ahead.
• When the crisis occurs, identify and assess issues and develop action plan.
• Be prepared to create a press release outlining how the organization will respond
to clients, staff, the public, funders, or others involved with the issue. Develop a
plan for interviews or other follow up activities. The agency director should
approve any formal statements before these are shared with the media.
• Try to anticipate specific questions from the media and prepare answers in advance.
• Keep a record of any requests for information and the organization’s responses.
Source: North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 2006
An important part of community education is the celebration of successes and the many
lives that are changed by the work of foster parents, adoptive parents, volunteers, and
child welfare staff. Celebrations might take place at local, statewide, or national gatherings.
Recognition categories might include any staff or volunteer positions as well as:
• Foster parents
• Adoptive parents
• Kinship parents
• Members of your speakers bureau
• Board or committee members
• Donors
• Funders
• Local and state government leaders
• Media companies or individuals
• Partner agencies, organizations, churches, etc.
• Statewide leaders
• Students or interns
• Visionaries
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North Carolina Division of Social Services
When your recruitment and retention program is stretched for time and money, how can
you develop productive community relationships? This is one area where
time up front pays big dividends down the line. Here are some tips from
social workers in North Carolina:
• Make it a win-win. Figure out what you can offer to others in
exchange for help with recruitment and retention. A business’ name
and logo on all your materials? A local mission activity for churches?
Community service hours for local high school students?
• Find one person who will champion your cause. You need just one
person in an organization to get excited about helping children in
foster care, and that person will help you build the relationship over time. Is it
the preacher’s wife or the church secretary who knows how to get things done?
Can you set up a meeting with the reporter or editor responsible for covering
community events? Is there someone in a civic group who has personal
experience with foster care?
• Use the community education and public awareness material from Chapter VI
for your initial outreach to community groups. Be prepared to tell each group
specifically what you are asking them for. Remember, think beyond “foster
parents.” Then make sure that someone—resource parent, staff member, or
volunteer—will follow up and take the relationship to the next step.
• Schedule time in your calendar for building and maintaining community
relationships. It may be one hour a week or every other week, or one day a
month. In whatever way works for your agency, someone needs to have regularly
scheduled time to make sure relationships bear fruit and continue year after
year. It is not enough to send flyers to all the churches or schools in your county.
It’s the personal follow-up that makes the difference.
Thanks to Jeanne Preisler and Cumberland County DSS’ Sandra Robinson for contributing ideas for this section.
Agencies, especially those that are smaller or in rural areas, can greatly benefit from a
regional approach to recruiting, training, and retaining resource families. This will allow
agencies to share resources and increase the pool of foster homes for everyone
(USDHHS, 1995). Agencies can then make placement decisions based on the best match
for a child, rather than placing children wherever they happen to have an open bed.
How might your agency collaborate with others in the same region?
• Offer joint MAPP/GPS classes (each agency hosts 1 or 2 classes per year that are
open to families from the other agencies)
• Share information about available foster and adoptive homes on a regular basis
(see information about existing collaborations below)
Investing
community
relationships
today pays
big dividends
later.
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North Carolina Division of Social Services
• Have a joint Recruitment & Retention Committee that funds and plans
recruitment, in-service training, and appreciation events. You can use existing
interagency committees, collaboratives, or other groups to lead this effort.
Who Should Be on a Regional R & R Committee?
• DSS and private agency recruitment, licensing, and foster care professionals
• DSS and private agency supervisors and program managers
• Resource families
• Youth in care
• Community members with experience and connections in relevant fields such as:
— Media relations
— Marketing/public relations
— Fundraising
— Local government
— Local busine